She sat nursing her tea, trying to come to terms with Oscar’s death. Everything felt unreal: her pregnancy, Oscar gone, the notice to quit the house that was her home. Even just sitting there quietly without the fear of him coming home and finding fault, that unbearable worry had gone. Why then did she feel the pain of losing him when he’d been so cruel? Why did she feel a vacuum had formed in the centre of her being – an absence so keenly felt that the pain of it was physical? Margo felt more alone than at any time in her life. In his own way Oscar had at least needed her; the two of them were together – perhaps not as commonly represented in romantic fiction, but they were together. Now she was truly apart; alone and adrift with nobody in the world who cared what happened to her. She felt the gravity of self-pity starting to pull her down into that relentless spiral she knew too well and fought back. Now it wasn’t just about her, the baby needed her and that small seed inside her was going to be her salvation. Margo didn’t need the world or its pity. The child she carried needed her and that was enough; for to be needed is to be loved and that was all she had ever desired.

Her first concern had to be money. There wasn’t anything she could hope to accomplish without money. How much was there in that tin? Was it even still there? A sudden panic attack hit her as she scrambled to the door, throwing it open to see whether the laird had dug up her vegetable patch whilst she’d been away. The spade remained where she’d left it, upright in the freshly turned soil where new plants held tight against the wind that threatened to lift them out of the ground. She glanced down the track, then searched around the hills just in case he had someone keeping an eye on her. Clouds sped by overhead, urged on by the prevailing wind which regularly reached gale force up on the mountain tops. The hills around her weren’t that high, but clouds covered the tops, wrapping the weathered rocks in moisture as water vapour coalesced in the colder air. The glen was empty, as far as she could tell. If the laird had already searched the cottage then he was unlikely to want to search it again. She pulled on her wellingtons, grabbed a coat and collected the spade. With a final look around her, she dug with a single sense of purpose to retrieve the tin, hiding it under the folds of her coat as she took it back into the cottage. Door safely locked and curtains drawn for good measure, she placed the tin on the kitchen table. Taking out the rolls of £50 notes, Margo started counting them into piles of £500. In a few minutes she’d opened the last roll – £3250! Plus the four hundred she’d hidden in her clothing and purse, and the £100 from the snotty reporter.