No Place Like Home by Jane Renshaw (the best electronic book reader .TXT) 📗

over the tops of the trees – Benlervie, it was called, a grand Georgian place that Bram found slightly intimidating. On the couple of occasions he’d been inside, he’d felt like a prole who should be using the back entrance.

This had once been Benlervie land, but the Taylors had decided to sell it as a plot because the whole kit and caboodle had been too much maintenance. The track and bridge still belonged to the Taylors, but the Woodside residents had right of access over them.

It was a perfect set-up – totally private and secluded, at the end of a track, but with neighbours near enough that you didn’t feel isolated. When they’d been thinking of a name for the house, they had toyed with Àite Brèagha, meaning ‘beautiful place’ in Scottish Gaelic, but there had been pronunciation and spelling issues, and delivery drivers were going to have a hard enough time finding them as it was. When Linda had suggested simply Woodside, everyone had agreed it was perfect.

So Woodside it was.

Bertie splashed back through the stream and headed off across the grass towards the wood, probably reasoning that he was more likely to find something edible in there. Bram sat down on the grassy bank and let the sound of the stream and the dancing sunlight on the little ripples and eddies fill his senses.

It was three o’clock. Fraser had gone off back to McKechnie and Son’s current building project, but David and Linda had decided to stay on for a bit and get Bram to run them home later. Surely they would only stay another hour at the most? He and Max could probably spin this ‘walk’ out for what, another forty minutes? Which would leave only twenty minutes more he’d have to spend in David’s company, not counting the drive into Grantown.

Max flopped down next to Bram on the grass.

‘Grandad’s doing my head in,’ he said, in that way he had sometimes of divining Bram’s thoughts. ‘I’d forgotten how full on he can be.’

‘Mm,’ said Bram. He tried not to bad-mouth David to the kids.

Max lay back to look at the sky. ‘How do you stand it, Dad? It makes me hopping mad when he goes on about how you’re living off Mum. You let her have her career at the expense of your own because I came along and–’

‘No no no. I never wanted a “career”, Max. Can you imagine me trotting into an office every day in a suit and tie, filling in spreadsheets and trying to talk corporate?’

Max grinned. ‘But you could have done maybe social work, or something environment-focused.’ Max had a conditional offer to study Ecology and Environmental Biology at Imperial College London. ‘I’m not saying voluntary stuff isn’t really worthwhile, but didn’t you ever want more than that?’

In Islington, Bram had been a volunteer for various charities, primarily involved in befriending isolated pensioners and teaching disadvantaged children to swim in the local pool. It still gave him a warm glow to think of the weekend he’d taken some of the better swimmers to Wales for a wild swimming course. Watching their faces as they’d frolicked in that river had been one of the highlights of his life.

‘Nope. Your mum loves her job, the cut and thrust of it, the challenge, but that’s not me, is it?’ They’d had Max while they were still at uni, and Bram had taken a break to look after him while Kirsty completed her education and started work as a forensic auditor for a top accountancy firm. Bram’s intention had been to complete his history degree and pursue his own career when Max started school – but somehow that had never happened. Bram had loved being a parent too much, if that were possible.

And he really didn’t envy Kirsty her career. In fact, during their last year in London, he’d become increasingly concerned about her. The job had been so pressured. One week, Bram had calculated that she’d spent less than four waking hours, total, with him and the kids.

He had suggested a radical change – why didn’t she go freelance? They could move to the country, give the kids a better quality of life…

‘We could live near Grannie and Grandad and Bertie!’ Phoebe had enthused, and next time she’d Skyped them she’d come out with this suggestion. Bram had winced inwardly. This wasn’t what he’d had in mind, but the idea had gained momentum. Both kids were really keen – once Max started university, he would have the perfect combo of London life during term time, when he could see his friends, and a country idyll in the holidays. And Phoebe had been desperate to leave her school and join Rhona at hers in Grantown. Bram had felt that the fly in the ointment – having to live near David – was an acceptable price to pay for a better life for all of them. Kirsty had been the one dragging her heels at first, but she’d come round to the idea. She missed home, particularly her mum, and felt guilty that she hadn’t been around much.

He smiled. ‘You know what, Max? It doesn’t get much better than this.’

‘It’s so quiet here, isn’t it?’

As if on cue, there was a sudden crack from off in the wood, like a branch of a tree had just whacked off another branch.

‘What was that?’ Max sat up.

Crack!

That wasn’t a branch – it was a gunshot! And this time it was followed by a yelp. A howl.

‘Bertie!’ they both said at once.

Max was off and running before Bram had got to his feet.

‘No! Max, no! Get back here!’

But Max kept going. Bram pounded after him, but before Max had reached the wood there was Bertie, limping out of the trees towards them, his yellow coat streaming blood.

‘Okay, boy, okay.’ Max dropped to his knees and took Bertie’s head in his arms as Bram examined the wound. His shoulder was covered in blood.

There was a nasty gash where the bullet