After about an hour and a half of playing, and with two more wee drams of Laphroaig consumed each, we had run out of letters to pick up. I was doing very well, winning easily, when I put down an A and an S on an available P to make a vertical ASP.

‘With the double-word score, that’s ten points,’ I said, feeling quite pleased with myself, but my joy was premature—much too premature.

I had carelessly left the A sticking up near the corner of the board.

‘BAIZE,’ Charles said triumphantly, putting down his last four tiles around the A. ‘That’s the Z on a double-letter score, and the whole thing on a triple-word score. So that’s two times ten for the Z, plus three for the B and one each for the vowels. Twenty-six, times three for the triple, that’s seventy-eight points in total.’

I sat there totally stunned.

‘But you don’t double the Z score first and then triple it,’ I complained.

‘Yes, you do.’

We resorted to reading the rules that were stuck to the underside of the box lid and, guess what, he was right.

‘Seventy-eight,’ he said again, writing it down on the score sheet. He added up. ‘That now puts me nineteen points in front, so I win.’

He smiled broadly and clapped his hands.

‘All right, all right. Enough,’ I said. ‘There’s no need to rub it in.’

I felt I’d been beaten on the line by a short head, having led all the way from the starting gate. Worse, it was a Devon Loch moment.

‘Want another game?’ Charles asked.

‘No.’

‘You’re just a bad loser,’ he said with a laugh.

‘Indeed I am,’ I agreed. ‘And, because of that, I have no intention of losing to Anton Valance.’

Nor of losing my wife and daughter.

CHAPTER

20

I SPENT MOST OF the night awake, much of it sitting on a chair in front of the Aga in the kitchen, with Charles’s loaded shotgun across my knees, while Rosie slept soundly at my feet throughout.

Nobody came.

Charles appeared at seven o’clock, coming into the kitchen wearing his pyjamas and a dressing gown. He yawned loudly, setting me off too.

‘Sleep well?’ I asked.

‘No,’ he replied. ‘I lay awake for hours on end listening.’

‘So did I. I just dozed occasionally.’

‘Have you been outside?’ he asked.

‘I went right round at first light but there’s nothing untoward.’

‘We should be grateful.’

Grateful was not the word I would have used. Relieved, maybe, but not grateful. But I couldn’t go on living like this. And I certainly couldn’t bring my family back home into these circumstances, that’s if Marina ever decided to return. Either way, I needed to get on and sort out Mr Valance and his two cronies, pronto.