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colder five hundred miles
north. She smiled to herself as she followed Morag at a brisk march. If she’d come here with Ian, he’d have arrived with a full set of waterproofs and walking boots. Instead she had
only an overnight bag and a suitcase, until her boxes arrived from home.
    ‘If you take Thor,’ Morag handed her a rope, attached to which was a solid blue-grey pony, ‘I’ll bring Mouse and Rhona, and we can take them down to the bottom
field.’
    Thor surveyed her through huge, liquid-brown eyes fringed with lashes that a supermodel would die for. His forelock reached down to his nose, like a 1980s pop star. Kate was in love. They
clopped down the drive in a cloud of ponies’ breath.
    ‘So what brings you to Auchenmor?’
    ‘Oh, I just fancied something different.’ Kate attempted nonchalance. ‘Bit of a chance to escape from reality.’
    Morag looked at Kate and raised her eyebrows.
    ‘Oh yes? What was his name then?’ She laughed, clicking the gate shut and turning away from the field. ‘I tell you what: why don’t you tell me the whole story over
breakfast. I like a wee bit of gossip with my bacon.’
    Kate opened her mouth, then shut it. Jean had been right about everyone knowing everything. It was going to be excruciating if she had to tell the whole Ian saga to every person she met. It
sounded a bit pathetic to say she’d escaped to the island to recover from breaking up with Ian – especially when the truth was that she didn’t miss him at all.
    Sitting at the table, frozen fingers hugging a cup of tea, Kate watched Morag prepare bacon and eggs. The kitchen was huge. A battered leather sofa in one corner was dominated
by two Burmese cats, which had looked at her disdainfully when she’d entered. In contrast she’d been greeted effusively by Timmy, a skittering Jack Russell, and presented with a tea
towel by Bert, a smiling Labrador retriever. Kate was desperate to investigate the huge bookcase, which was stuffed two layers deep in places. BBC Radio 4 was playing in the background, a soothing
mutter that reminded her of her father.
    As a child, she’d sit for hours in his study, drawing ponies on the back of discarded manuscripts, while he sat at his desk, always forgetting to drink his tea until it was cold.
He’d been a huge giant of a dad, big shoulders in a long overcoat in winter, coming in from the office smelling of damp wool and buses and rainy, wintry Cambridge streets. Even as a little
girl Kate had loved spending time in the office with him, charming his authors with her sweet, shy smile. She loved being flung up and caught in his big, capable hands, until one day she was thrown
up in the air and he wasn’t there to catch her. He’d walked out of the door, battered leather briefcase in hand, and never come home. Kate hadn’t spoken for a year after the
accident, stunned into silence by misery. Her mother, tortured with guilt at her last words to her husband being bitter ones, was suffocating in her need to prove herself a loving and ever-present
parent. When Kate began speaking again, a year after her father’s death, her mother saw that as confirmation that she was on the right track.
    She’s been smothering me ever since, thought Kate.
    Looking out of the window, she could see ponies grazing and, beyond the woods, glimpses of a rocky outcrop reaching into the sea. She found herself feeling curiously at home.
    ‘Here you are.’ Morag slid a plate of bacon, eggs and mushrooms across the table. ‘Now eat up and tell me all. I need to live vicariously through you young people, now
I’m an old lady.’
    Morag, with her lined, still-beautiful, almost masculine face, didn’t look like the sort of old lady who sat around drinking tea and waiting for gossip to come to her. Her dark eyes
twinkled as she sat down opposite Kate, pouring the tea out of a huge Bridgewater pot. Despite Kate’s misgivings, Morag seemed so straightforward and kind and kindred-spiritish