‘We’ll throw money at it,’ Nico snaps. ‘Get the tests helicoptered in and out if necessary. Or send them on a tender, I don’t know. You and Leo can work together on it to sort the details, but I don’t want us being out at sea to stand in the way of us finding out what happened. How long do these kinds of tests take usually?’

‘In all honesty, it’s not something I have any experience of, and given where we are and the amount of people, it will be more than a few days, I think. But I’ll look at the options and come back to you tomorrow,’ I say. The truth is I’ve never been involved in anything like that before and have absolutely no idea. But I don’t think that’s the answer Nico’s looking for.

He nods. ‘Thank you. No expense spared. We need to get to the bottom of this.’

38

June 2013

Scottish Highlands

‘You’re keen,’ Fred said, because I was already waiting by ‘our’ tree when his van pulled up the next time. The track from the road to our house must have been about two miles long – I was at least a mile from the house and this tree was easy to spot because it was one of the biggest. We couldn’t be seen either from the house or the road here and I didn’t imagine Dad would bother to come all the way down here without good reason. It was almost perfect.

I grinned. ‘I was looking forward to seeing you,’ I said.

He laughed. ‘You know what I like about you, Laura?’

I felt myself blush. ‘Um … no?’

‘You don’t play games. You say what you mean. There’s none of the usual “let’s pretend I don’t like him to make him like me more” or not calling to make a point.’

‘But I don’t call you. I don’t have a phone.’

He smiled. ‘Believe me, you’re probably better off without one. Everyone on your back twenty-four hours a day … it gets stressy sometimes.’

I nodded. I wondered if that was one of the things Dad was trying to protect me from. Stress. Admittedly I did have very little stress in my life.

He spread out the blanket on the ground as usual and we lay down. He kissed me and touched me, doing everything I have dreamed of him doing since he was last here. Things I couldn’t even have imagined, that seemed weird and strange but at the same time, somehow right. And I knew that, when he was gone, it would be all I thought about until next time.

Afterwards we lay back on the blanket while Fred smoked a cigarette.

‘Why is your dad so protective, do you reckon?’ he asked, propping himself up on one elbow and looking down at me.