When he got back to his flat he went straight to the answering machine. It showed three missed calls, but no messages had been left. He knew with a deadly inner certainty who the early morning caller had been . . . and why she would have been ringing Louisa’s house first thing in the morning, UK time.

Chapter Thirty-two

The trip to Toronto had been an unqualified success on many different levels. Marnie had thoroughly enjoyed the companionship of her father – she didn’t think she could remember a time when she’d ever before had him all to herself for twenty-four hours, or felt so close to him.

She’d spent the first night with him and her stepmother, Toni, in their New York apartment and enjoyed seeing her three half-brothers, only the youngest of whom was also Toni’s child. She was fond of them all in a semi-detached way, very different from the Piper family’s full-on commitment to each other, and got on reasonably well with all of them – so long as they didn’t have to be together for too long.

‘Dad,’ she’d said suddenly, soon after they’d taken off for Toronto, ‘in all your adventurous life, have you ever had a feeling of certainty that you’ve met your soulmate?’

Her father gave her a quizzical look and rubbed his chin. ‘Soulmate? I guess I could be a bit of a late developer in the soul department.’ He chuckled. ‘I’ve been a bit more of a body man myself,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I think Toni and I rub along pretty well – ten years together coming up, would you believe? Never would have thought I’d last that long with one woman, but soulmates? I dunno about that. I take it you think you’ve met such a rare creature, young lady?’

‘I think I have.’

‘Better put some salt on his tail then,’ he said, drily.

She looked at him sideways, gauging his mood. ‘He’s done time,’ she said.

Her father threw back his head and roared with laughter. ‘Oh, Marnie-Jane,’ he said. ‘You never cease to astonish me. Here I am chasing rainbows with you on one of the most unlikely, crazy, romantic enterprises that’s ever come my way, and you choose this moment to tell me you’ve taken up with a criminal!’

‘I didn’t say he was a criminal,’ said Marnie indignantly, but greatly relieved that her volatile parent had reacted with such good humour. ‘I said he’d been to prison.’

‘What did he do then? You don’t usually get put inside without some reason.’

So she told him all – or nearly all – she could about Christopher Piper: about how they had met and where, on the first stage of her search for the house that had lived in her head for twenty years; about Christopher’s death by dangerous driving charge and his spell in gaol; about his past career and his intended new one and about the fact that he’d been with her when she’d found Eilean Dobhran – and that she loved him. ‘Six months ago I still couldn’t have imagined I’d be feeling like this about anyone,’ she said, ‘only I know now that this time it is quite, quite different. This is real.’