No Place Like Home Jane Renshaw (best books to read for beginners TXT) 📖

to him, but when he reached him Max stepped back. ‘Don’t worry. I’ve deleted the footage from the cloud and my phone. And Scott says Grandad’s phone is knackered – been in the water too long. So you’re good. It’s all good.’

‘Max–’ But what could he say?

Max was looking at him coldly. ‘Seems the police are thinking Grandad killed Finn, and Fraser covered it up. Now Grandad’s dead, the investigation will probably fizzle out eventually. It won’t be a priority for them, with the probable culprit dead.’

Kirsty had joined them at the door. She reached out a hand, tentatively, to touch Max’s arm, and he let her but didn’t respond in any way.

‘It will all be okay,’ Kirsty got out. ‘All we need to do is say nothing.’

‘Yeah,’ said Max, looking from her to Bram with an awful little smile. ‘Yeah. I get it.’

29

Bram didn’t want to let go of Kirsty’s hand. They were standing in the car park, the two of them, holding tight to each other’s hands like scared children. Bram had never really liked Aviemore. It was a tourist village, and the long, modern, ugly main street stretching to either side was full of outdoor clothing shops and cafés and gift shops against the incongruously spectacular backdrop of the Cairngorms. This morning, though, it was a happy confusion of tourist coaches and cars and people in brightly coloured jackets. He wished he could stay standing here forever.

‘But think of the kids,’ Kirsty burst out, squeezing his hand even tighter.

‘I am thinking of the kids.’ Bram had to go. He had to let go of her hand and turn and walk away across this car park. ‘What kind of message would I be giving Max, if I let this go on any longer? That it’s okay to – to do what I did, and let someone else take the blame? If we make him cover this up for us, he’ll come to hate us, as you hated David. And for good reason.’

Kirsty shook her head. ‘He doesn’t want you to do this!’

But the only thing stopping Bram from running back to the car with her and jumping in and roaring out of here was the thought of Max’s face, the way Max had looked at him, when he had explained what he was going to do now.

‘No, Dad!’ he had sobbed, but his face…

There had been devastation there, desolation, but also relief, a dropping away of a burden no boy of eighteen should have to bear. It had been the way Max used to look at Bram when he was little, when something had frightened or upset him and he’d run to his dad, his face contorted, but his eyes… his eyes so full of trust, so full of certainty that Bram would know what to say and what to do to make it right.

He let go of Kirsty’s hand. Gently, he kissed her, he pulled her close, as on the street someone laughed, a coach full of tourists chugged by, the world kept turning.

And then he left her there.

He walked into the police station.

He asked to speak to DI Scott Sinclair.

And when Scott had shown him into a boxy little room and gestured for him to sit on the other side of the table, Bram didn’t sit, he remained standing, he looked Scott in the eye, and he spoke the words that had been fighting, every second of every day since that terrible night, to be released.

‘I killed him. I killed Finn Taylor.’

Epilogue

One Year Later

This was Kirsty’s night-time ritual, now: going round the house pulling the curtains across the windows. They were deep-set little windows, with the original Victorian sash-and-case frames – each one a picture, showing dusk gathering in the old orchard that surrounded the house. A late dusk, of course, this far north in summer. Mum and Phoebe were already in bed and the light had only just begun to fade. The walls were thick, so the windowsills were deep, and on each one she had arranged a collection of pretty things – tiny blue and green glass bottles, an old stoneware jug, a vase with roses from the garden, a papier-mâché elephant Phoebe had made at school.

Little Knowes Croft couldn’t have been more different from Woodside.

Built in 1802, it was on a miniature scale, with small, cosy rooms and low ceilings. Perfect for hunkering down over the winter, when the four of them, Max, Phoebe, Mum and Kirsty, had seemed to want nothing more than to light the fire and put the TV on and sit here together, Phoebe cuddled between Kirsty and Mum on the sofa, Max in the chair or stretched on the hearth rug.

Kirsty had sold most of their old furniture and bought new stuff, mainly antiques to suit the cottage, at auctions and on eBay. She was particularly fond of the grandfather clock which just fitted into the low-ceilinged living room, ticking away now companionably.

The sale of Woodside had funded the purchase of Little Knowes Croft with plenty to spare, although they’d got much less for Woodside than it was worth because of its associations with Finn Taylor’s death. But they had enough money in the bank to allow Kirsty to work only part time, to pick and choose the less stressful clients, the work that interested her, and let her spend more time with Mum and the kids.

Bram was so pleased about that.

He’d decorated his cell with the photographs Max had taken of Little Knowes, usually photobombed by Phoebe or Bertie or both. When Kirsty, sitting across the table from him in that awful prison visiting room, had sobbed that she felt so bad that he had never even seen Little Knowes, that it couldn’t seem like home to him, he had smiled. ‘Of course it does. My home is wherever you are. You and the kids.’

This would be another good photograph for Max to take for Bram, she decided: the view through the tiny window next