‘Carol!’ her father called out after barely greeting his daughter. ‘It’s Elle on the phone.’

She waited until she heard the rustle of movement and could picture her parents huddled over the phone as they searched for the button to put her on speaker.

‘Are you there?’ her father asked.

‘I’m here, Dad.’ Elle smiled. She really did miss them. ‘Hi, Mum.’

‘Hello, how are you?’

‘Fine. It’s going great. I met Alice and Peter and their family last night.’

‘How was it?’ her mother asked.

‘It was … really nice.’ She thought back to the warm welcome she’d been given. ‘They said to say hello to you both.’

‘That’s nice,’ her mother said, before launching into a debrief of her earlier conversation with Lauren about what Lucy had been up to. Her older sister and mother had always had a lot in common, and their daily phone calls were the highlight of her mother’s day.

‘So, what are your plans for today?’ her father asked once her mother paused.

‘I’ve just finished breakfast and I’m about to go poke about around Portsoy. It’s absolutely beautiful here,’ she said, staring up at the manor house before her.

‘Seems like you’re enjoying yourself.’

‘I’m having the best time, Dad.’

‘It certainly sounds like it.’

‘Actually, there was something I wanted to ask,’ she said, feeling a little as though she were going behind Gran’s back. ‘Do you remember Gran ever mentioning if anything happened between her and the rest of the family over here? Something that upset her?’

‘Why’s that? Did someone say something?’ her mother asked, and Elle knew from her voice she was most likely frowning.

‘No,’ Elle said hastily. ‘It’s just a feeling I have, that there was something keeping Gran from coming back. Her older sister Moira lives with Alice and Peter, she thought I was Gran for a minute, but she’s not well … I just get the feeling that something happened.’

‘I can’t recall Mum ever saying anything,’ her dad said. ‘Although, she didn’t really talk much about family.’

‘Don’t you find that a bit strange?’ Elle had never asked Gran much about her childhood either, because, well … she was her gran and Elle had never really stopped to think much about what her life might have been like. To Elle, she was simply Gran.

‘As a kid, I remember Dad saying Mum would get upset if she talked about Scotland because she missed her family,’ Alister said. ‘I guess I never really pressed her on the past because of that. But she never mentioned any falling-out with anyone or anything like that.’

‘Having met them, I just don’t understand the distance thing between Gran and her sister.’

‘Darling, not all families are close. It was a long time ago. She had a new life in Australia and had obviously drifted apart from her older siblings. Besides, she was a teenager when she left Scotland. They’d probably become strangers to her,’ Caroline said matter-of-factly.