‘I wasn’t planning on going to Skye tomorrow, just looking at options.’ Elle wasn’t in any hurry to get to Skye; the sooner they reached Skye, the sooner they would be at the castle and Gran’s trip would come to an end. It was a sobering thought. Would fulfilling Gran’s final wish be the end of their time together? There were so many unknowns about this crazy situation. Elle still wasn’t entirely sure whether or not she was hallucinating, and she couldn’t just ask someone. Perhaps, if this did turn out to be some delusional refusal to let go of her grief, then maybe it was better to just let it all play out and see what happened when it came time to scatter Gran’s ashes. Immediately she pushed the thought away. There was a lot to see between now and then, and they still had the visit with the family before they prepared for the final leg of the journey.

‘It’ll be nice to finally catch up with your family,’ Elle said as she got ready for bed, then frowned when there was no reply. ‘Gran?’

It wasn’t just her imagination—every time something came up about her family, Gran went quiet. ‘What’s wrong?’ Elle tried again, but there was no answer.

She tried to picture what it might have been like for Gran to now return to her family after a lifetime apart. Elle knew there was something in the past that had caused a rift between Gran and her sister—there had to be, because Elle knew how important family was to her grandmother. Growing up, Gran and Pa had been a huge part of her life. They lived only a few streets away, and Elle and her siblings saw their grandparents pretty much every day. Which is why this whole thing with her Scottish family didn’t make sense. Gran clearly didn’t want to talk about it, but that didn’t stop Elle’s determination to get to the heart of it.

The next morning, Elle negotiated the narrow winding roads with relative ease, stopping at a few small villages along the way, happily taking photos and poking about in the quaint shops. Pitlochry was nothing short of enchanting with its medieval buildings lining the streets. Elle stopped at a tea house that extended to an art gallery as part of a renovated barn. The owners were an English couple, and Elle talked with them for over an hour about different styles of art and techniques. She purchased a beautiful seascape that she could imagine hanging on her parents’ wall and organised to have it shipped home as a gift. She ignored the pricey conversion from pounds to Australian dollars—and the fact that she would most likely make it home before the painting did—and instead felt happy that she had been able to support a local artist.