‘I’m aware of that,’ said Torr evenly. ‘But I’ll be back tonight in any case.’

‘As I said, you can stay the night if you want.’ Mallory’s carefully cool detachment slipped a little as a trace of pettishness crept into her voice. Hunching a shoulder, she busied herself wiping down the worktop so she didn’t have to look at him. ‘I don’t care.’

‘I’m aware of that too,’ he said.

Mallory didn’t see him go out, or close the door quietly behind him, but she was aware of the moment he had gone. Something had gone from the air with his presence, a warmth, a reverberation that left a flatness behind it, and for some reason tears pricked behind her eyes.

She blinked them fiercely away. What on earth was she crying for? Torr had only gone to Inverness for the day. It wasn’t as if they had just said goodbye for ever.

She hadn’t said goodbye at all.

On an impulse, she ran out along the corridor and through the cavernous great hall, but when she burst, panting, through the huge wooden door, the car was already disappearing round the bend in the track, and she couldn’t be sure that Torr had seen her wave.

Deflated, Mallory turned back inside. She wished she had said goodbye.

Kincaillie felt very empty all day. She worked off her feelings with a strenuous digging session in the kitchen garden. It was a bright morning, at least, but a strong wind was picking up, and by afternoon it had blown in rafts of rain clouds. The roofers knocked off early.

‘Looks like a storm’s blowing up,’ said Dougal, eying the sky. ‘Will you be all right now?’

‘I’ll be fine,’ said Mallory, who had been too busy imagining Torr and Sheena together to care much about the weather. ‘Torr will be back later.’

But Torr didn’t come back. The wind grew wilder, splattering rain against the windows and thrashing the trees beyond the kitchen garden wall as the hands on the kitchen clock inched round. Mallory made supper, but still he didn’t come.

Had he thought she meant it when she said she didn’t care if he came home or not? Surely he would have rung, though? He had said he would be back, and Torr always did what he said he would do.

Heedless of the storm outside, Mallory fretted all evening. Perhaps he had stayed to have dinner with Sheena? But then why not ring? And even if he had left at eight, he should have been back by eleven.

Unless he had decided to spend the night there?

The thought made Mallory go cold. Why hadn’t she been nicer to him that morning?

She could ring his mobile, she realised. Neither of their phones worked at Kincaillie, but Torr might have his with him in Inverness. She could call and see where he was. But what if he was with Sheena? What would he think if she started chasing him up like a jealous wife?

No, she definitely couldn’t ring.

Then she had another, worse, thought. What if Torr had been in an accident? He might not have been able to ring. Oh, God, what if he were lying in hospital right now? Mallory wrung her hands and paced up and down the kitchen. Perhaps she should ring the police?

What could she say, though? I argued with my husband and now he’s gone off for the night and hasn’t come home, and, yes, he might be with another woman.

No, she couldn’t ring the police. Not yet.

Round and round Mallory’s thoughts churned, feverishly inventing ever more disastrous scenarios, until eventually she had worked herself into such a state that she was ready to risk the humiliation of calling Torr’s mobile. Too bad if she woke him up. At least she would know that he was alive.

It was only then that she discovered that the line was dead.

Mallory felt sick. With no phone and no car, how would she find out what had happened to Torr? The roofers wouldn’t be back until Monday. He could be lying in hospital, thinking that she didn’t care. Or perhaps he was unconscious. What if even now some nurse was desperately trying to get hold of his next of kin? She would rather he was having an affair with Sheena than think of him dead or badly injured.

At three o’clock, for want of anything better to do, she went to bed. But she was too tense to sleep. She lay staring at the ceiling instead, gripped by a fear greater than she had ever known, and wishing desperately that she could rewind time so that she could have told Torr how she felt about him, while a single thought circled endlessly and dully round her brain.

She hadn’t even said goodbye.

CHAPTER TEN

THE PHONE was still dead the next morning. Mallory had fallen into a restless doze eventually, but she woke very early, with a sick sense of premonition.

For a few moments she let herself hold onto the hope that Torr had magically arrived when she was asleep. She saw herself walking into the kitchen and finding him slumped in a chair. He would tell her that he hadn’t wanted to wake her, that he been very quiet so that she could sleep.

Almost eagerly, Mallory threw back the duvet and hurried into the kitchen, but the room was cold and empty. There was no Torr, no Charlie. Never had she felt more alone.

Panic scrabbled at the edge of her mind, but she made herself stay calm. There was no point in getting hysterical. She had to find out what had happened to him, that was all.

In the bathroom, she splashed water on her face and grimaced at her reflection in the mirror. She looked ghastly. Her face was white and pasty, her hair lank, and there were dark bags under her eyes.

Mallory’s whole body was buzzing with tiredness and tension, but that was too bad. Somehow she was going to have to find the energy to walk to Carraig and find a phone. It was a good twenty miles, but not impossible, and she had to do something.

So she put on the walking shoes that she hadn’t used since Charlie had died, and zipped up her old dog-walking jacket. Some time in the night the gale had subsided, but a stiff wind still blew off the steely-grey sea and heavy clouds jostled over the hilltops. It was hard to believe that it was June already. In Ellsborough she would have expected sunshine at the least, but here she was just glad that it wasn’t raining.

Worry and exhaustion had created a tight band behind her eyes, and her head throbbed, but Mallory kept her head down and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. She made bargains with herself. If Torr’s all right, I’ll never complain about anything again.

I won’t say a word when I see him, she promised herself. I won’t tell him how worried I was. I’ll be sweet and understanding and make him glad that I’m there to take him home. I’ll do anything as long as I find him.

On she plodded, with the wind whipping her hair about her face, and dark forebodings circling endlessly and uselessly around her brain. It took her over an hour to get to the end of the Kincaillie track and onto the single-track road that wound through the hills. Surely someone would come along and give her a lift now?

But she had walked a good mile or so before a glint in the distance caught her attention. A car was bowling along the road from Carraig, its metalwork flashing as the sun came out from behind a cloud for one brief, dazzling moment before it was swallowed up behind the greyness once more.

Mallory’s heart leapt with hope. It was coming from the wrong direction, but that didn’t matter. This was the Highlands, not Ellsborough. The driver would stop when he saw her and take her back to Carraig, or at least on to the nearest phone. The road was very narrow, but she went on to the next passing place and stopped to wait impatiently.

It seemed to take a very long time for the car to reach her, and she began to be afraid that it had turned off when the sound of an engine made her straighten and begin waving frantically as it came round the bend.

So convinced was Mallory by then that Torr had been in an accident, that it took a few moments for her to recognise the vehicle that braked hastily at the sight of her.

It stopped right in front of her and the driver wound down the window and leant out. ‘Mallory?’ said Torr in astonishment. ‘What on earth are you doing out here?’

Torr. Torr, with his dark blue eyes and his austere mouth and his dark brows contracted in a frown. Not being cut out of his car, or in a hospital bed, but whole and healthy, making the hills recede with the immediacy of his presence.

He was all right. That was all Mallory could think at first. She stared at him as if hardly daring to believe her eyes, only to find that the dizzying rush of relief was swiftly succeeded by white-hot anger.

‘Where have you been?’ she demanded, the desperate bargains she had made with herself utterly forgotten.

‘In Carraig.’

‘Carraig? Carraig?’ She glared at him. ‘What were you doing there?’

‘I spent the night at the pub-’ Torr started to explain, before she cut him off.

‘Do you mean to tell me that I’ve wasted all night worrying about you, and all the time you were in Carraig?’ Mallory was spluttering, practically gibbering with fury. ‘I suppose it was too much trouble to drive the last twenty miles!’

Torr drew an exasperated breath. ‘It wasn’t-’

‘Why would you bother, after all?’ She ignored him. ‘It was just me waiting for you. Just stupid old Mallory, who can’t climb mountains and isn’t any use for anything. Just your wife. What do I matter?’

‘I couldn’t get through.’ Torr had to raise his voice to interrupt her. ‘I’ve been trying to tell you. The storm blew down a couple of trees and the Carraig road was completely blocked, so I went back to the pub inn and spent the night there. I did try to phone you, but the lines were down too. There was nothing I could do.’