Highland Games

Prologue

Zoe sat by the side of the bed, holding her great-uncle’s hand as he slept. She stared at the framed pictures on the wall: watercolour prints of countryside scenes, taking the viewer somewhere peaceful and calming, whilst the roar of London traffic outside reminded them they were anywhere but. Great-uncle Willie had spent almost his entire life alone in a remote corner of Scotland. Living off the land, in a one-room cabin, doing odd jobs for the Kinloch estate. It was a life of open space and freedom, but now his last breaths would be the acrid tang of exhaust fumes and disinfectant.

The sound of his breathing changed and she turned to him, running her thumb across the back of his hands, the hills and valleys of veins, bones and sinews, the landscape of a lifetime. His hair used to be a mirror of her own, a crazy cloud of red curls. But now the colour had left, leaving wisps of white behind. He opened his eyes and she moved closer.

‘Uncle Willie, it’s me. It’s Zoe.’

He moved his head and she stood up and perched on the edge of the bed. He spent so much time asleep now, and she was never really sure if he recognised her when he was awake. A spark flickered in his eyes.

‘Princess Zoe?’

Her eyes stung. ‘That’s me,’ she replied, jaw tight with emotion. She tried to smile.

‘Dinnae cry for me, lassie,’ he whispered. ‘I’ve had a good life.’

Zoe swallowed. ‘I…’

Willie looked past her. ‘Your mum?’

Zoe shook her head. Tears dropped onto their clasped hands. ‘She’s having a cup of tea with Dad. They’ll be back in a bit.’

Willie looked back at her, raising up an inch off the pillow. ‘I’ve left you something. Ye have to take it,’ he whispered, urgently.

What? Great-uncle Willie didn’t own anything.

‘The cabin. It’s yours. Go have an adventure. You don’t have to always do what your mum and dad want. Do something for you, love.’

He sagged back into the pillow, his eyes closing and a sigh rushing out between his dry lips.

‘Follow your heart,’ he whispered, before falling back to sleep.

Chapter One

Three Months Later

This was it. She was going to die.

Die being mauled and eaten by a bear. Why had she left her flat, her job, her friends, her life, for this wild fantasy only to die on the first night?

And she wasn’t even wearing her best underwear.

Adrenaline shot up Zoe’s body, turbocharged by alcohol, straight to her frantic heart. Think! Can I barricade the door? She tore her gaze from the grimy window, fighting the darkness inside the deserted cabin. The chairs looked rotten and the table too heavy to move without making a noise. What happened to the rest of Willie’s furniture? And why did I neck half a bottle of Prosecco the minute I arrived? On an empty stomach?

She peered back at the large shape shuffling in the blackness outside. It was huge; bigger and broader than a man. But hang on, were there even bears in Scotland? She ran through her memories – a scrambled montage of wildlife documentaries – trying to pick the right country from ice caps, rainforests, and savannah. There had been a film, years ago, about bringing native species back to the Highlands. Had they reintroduced bears? Or was it beavers? She went to Google it, then remembered there was no phone signal.

God, this place really is the ends of the earth.

She tiptoed to the cabin door. It didn’t lock or even close properly, hopeless against a creature that big. She peered through the crack. It was by the outhouse. Maybe it was searching for food. Could she throw it something to eat? She locked her eyes on the figure and bent her knees, her fingers fluttering into the shopping bags on the floor. They knocked against a can and it tipped, tumbling with a crash.

The figure’s head snapped up. Zoe heard a low growl: the sound of a creature preparing to kill.

Shit, shit, shit!

Her hand closed around a loaf of bread. She yanked it out, pushed the door open and catapulted the loaf into the air. It arced overhead and landed with a soft thud at the bear’s feet. The growl changed to a frenzied bark, and a wolf stalked out from behind the outhouse.

Oh god, wolves and bears!

She was doomed. The bear put a paw out, silencing the wolf, bent down and picked up her weapon.

Zoe was white with fear but Prosecco made her bold. ‘Shoo! Shoo! Be off with you!’

The bear raised itself to its full height.

‘A loaf of bread? You threw a loaf of bread at me?’

Oh god, it was a man. A man-bear. Out of the frying pan into the fire. ‘I’ve got a gun! Get off my land! Or… I’ll shoot you!’

The man-bear slouched back against the outhouse, tossing the loaf from paw to paw. ‘No, you don’t, and this isn’t your land.’

‘Yes, it bloody well is!’

Zoe was furious. She was thirty per cent cold, sixty per cent drunk and one hundred per cent scared so stupid she’d thought bears roamed wild in Scotland. To top it off, some intruder was now saying this wasn’t her land? She reached back into the bag, grabbed a can and threw it with pinpoint accuracy, hitting him on the shoulder.

It bounced off. He must be made of steel.

‘Let me guess,’ he drawled. ‘Baked beans?’

She pulled out another and threw it at him. ‘Get! Off! My! Land!’ she yelled; each word punctuated by another grocery item sailing through the air. When the bag was empty, she balled it up and threw it after her food. It unravelled and fell to the floor by her feet.

‘Have you finished?’

Zoe was silent, thinking of what else she had left. Her boots? The man-bear walked towards her, holding the loaf at arm’s length. The wolf – okay, dog – at his heels, wagging its tail. They climbed the steps to the porch where she was standing.

‘Yours?’ If words were an eyebrow, this one was arched.

Zoe snatched it, squinting up at him. His face was obscured by the darkness. ‘I told you,’ she hissed, ‘get off my fucking land.’

He leaned in and she leaned back. ‘It’s not your fucking land,’ he whispered.

‘Yes, it bloody well is! My great-uncle gave it to me.’

He stepped back, surprised. ‘Mad Willie?’

‘It’s great-uncle Willie to you!’

He crossed his arms in front of him. ‘So then, niece of great-uncle Willie, is the land freehold or leasehold?’

Zoe paused. How did he know? ‘I own the leasehold for the next thirty years.’

‘Ahh, so it’s not really yours then. It belongs to the Kinloch estate.’

Zoe was beyond anger, beyond fear. This massive oaf had nearly given her a heart attack and now he was telling her it wasn’t her land? She took a big breath, intending to let him have it, when he interrupted.

‘So, may I ask why you threw a loaf of bread at me?’

Zoe stopped, set off course. ‘I thought you were a bear,’ she replied without thinking.

Silence.

Then the man-bear started laughing.

The sound was even bigger than him, splitting the darkness with unrepressed joy and echoing across the loch to the other side of the valley. Zoe’s toes tingled as the deck reverberated under her feet. He laughed as if he couldn’t stop, his huge frame doubled over as he gasped for breath. He was wheezing now, each howl punctuated by ‘A bear! A bear!’

‘I don’t see what’s so funny.’

The man tried to control himself. ‘It’s Scotland, not bloody Yellowstone! Have you come here looking for pixies? Maybe a little Nessie spotting?’ He started laughing again at his own joke, guffawing at her.

‘I’m here to live, you buffoon! And it’s not funny. You scared the shit out of me. And anyway, who the hell are you? And what are you doing sniffing around my house in the dead of night?’

The man-bear stopped laughing, and straightened up. ‘Okay. First, it’s not the dead of night, it gets darker quicker up here than in the home counties. Second, I work on this land and saw a piddly little sports car abandoned on the track. I came to see what was going on and got attacked by a lunatic armed with a loaf of bread. And third, you can’t live here; it’s not fit for human habitation. I’ll show you the way to the village. There’s a pub with rooms you can stay in, and tomorrow you can go home.’

Zoe clenched her jaw and spat out her words like bullets. ‘Listen here, Mr Know-it-all, let me get one thing straight. This is my land and my home and I intend to live here. I don’t need an enormous, overgrown yeti trespassing on my property and frightening the crap out of me. Now bugger off.’ She held up the loaf of bread. ‘I’m going to make myself some beans on toa—’ she remembered there was no electricity, ‘bread, and have a quiet night in.’

‘Maybe watch some telly?’ he replied. ‘Surf the web? Have a nice hot bubble bath? Good luck with that.’

He stepped off the porch and strode away, whistling for the dog to follow him. Zoe stalked into the cabin and slammed the door as hard as she could. It rewarded her by falling off its hinges and landing with an almighty crash on the front deck.

The man didn’t look back.

She gulped in a breath, catching it in her throat. Tension spiralled inside her, pushing up tears she wasn’t ready to shed. What have I done? It was all going wrong before it had even started. She’d arrived too late, there was no phone signal, and her new home had no door, let alone the bed she remembered from her childhood. She shook her head. She would not cry here. She wouldn’t give the man-bear, or anyone else, the satisfaction of being right. She was going to have something to eat, get a good night’s sleep, and know that, as her mum always promised, everything would be better in the morning.

She counted to sixty, then went to find the jar of jam she’d pitched at the yeti. It was stuck in a patch of mud. She tugged it out and took it to the stream that ran down the hill, cleaning off as much as she could in the glacial water. Back at the cabin, she sat on the front deck, dipping slices of bread into the jam. Swigging Prosecco from the bottle, she watched the dark hills in the distance and the faint shimmer of starlight on the loch.

It was like another world or stepping back in time. Early yesterday morning she’d set off from the small suburban flat in London that was no longer her home. The people, traffic, lights, pollution, and background hum of the city had never been that noticeable, but now their absence was deafening.

It was so dark. So quiet. So empty.

She felt a thrill of nervous excitement and a giggle hiccupped out. God, no wonder her parents and friends thought she’d lost her mind. Giving up a good career to go and live in a cabin left to her by her dead great-uncle. In another country. At least she spoke the language. Sort of.

Her stomach was filling and the alcohol was helping lift her spirits, but there was no easy solution for bed. Could she drive into the village now and look up Morag? No. It was late and she couldn’t give up an hour into her new life. She sighed. Nothing was going according to plan and the oaf-bear was right: she couldn’t stay here. Despite the Prosecco, she was shivering and desperately needed the loo.

The outhouse wasn’t an option. Had she arrived earlier she could have cleaned out the cobwebs. But now there was no way she was going to step into that box of spiders, sit over a black hole and pee. She crouched next to the side of the cabin instead, then cleaned her teeth, swilling her mouth out from a bottle of water. The basics done, she scooped up her bag and walked back to her abandoned car.

Siena was a beautiful little MG; perfect for city life. However, she wasn’t entirely at home in the Highlands. Mud was spattered across her sky-blue body, and she was far too delicate to have handled the rough track down to the cabin. Zoe was relieved she’d left her near the main road, so she could easily reverse out in the morning. She threw her bag in the back, reclined the front seat, and attempted to manoeuvre herself into a sleeping bag like a clumsy caterpillar. Caught in her old London patterns, she inserted earplugs and pulled on an eye mask, not that it made any difference to her comfort.

She’d never slept in a car before and now she knew why. All five foot ten of her was never going to be able to stretch out in comfort. Her feet kept hitting the pedals, the headrest was hard, and her arms were too cold outside the sleeping bag and too constricted inside.

She considered going to Morag’s again but dismissed it. She wouldn’t admit defeat and wanted to face her in the softer light of day, not showing up in the middle of the night, a ghost from the past.

It was going to be a long and miserable night.