Page 93 of Duke It Out
Janey gets up and puts her hand on my arm for a moment, squeezing it gently. “I’ll let you be.”
I stare at the page for a long time, my heart contracting at the sight of my mother’s writing. No wonder she left him, left us all. All that courage to walk away only to die of cancer a few short months later. It doesn’t seem just.
And then I look down at the stack of papers Janey’s left on the desk. It’s Edie’s draft. There’s a yellow Post-it note sticking out midway through the pile. I recognise her writing.
Was going to delete this section. Not sure it’s useful – I thought you might like to see it and decide.
I start reading.
It’s not about me. It’s not about forged birth certificates or secret paternity. It’s not about missing heirs, or my mother or firstborn children lost to tragedy. It’s about bloody land.
Underhand deals, broken promises, manipulation and subtle power plays. Ancient crofts and farms annexed into the estate under the pretence of stewardship then sold to a private shooting syndicate for a fat profit a decade later. It goes on and on, pages and pages of it.
The real betrayal’s been here the whole time under my feet, and I’ve been too blinded by my own hubris to see it.
And Edie wasn’t going to expose it – she’s flagged it. For me.
I shove the untouched glass of whisky away. I need to focus right now. I sit for hours, reading the work she’s been doing, realising that she’s tried her best to paint a picture in words that tells the story of my father’s stewardship and skirt the edges of exactly what kind of man he is.
“Fuck.” I push my hands through my hair and look upand realise that the skies have darkened. I’ve been sitting here for hours.
“You okay?” There’s a knock at the door and Janey pops her head round the door, her face puckered with concern.
I nod.
And then Jamie’s voice echoes in the corridor and a moment later his face appears, towering over hers as he puts both hands over her shoulders and looks in at me, brows raised and his usual cheerful expression on his face.
“Alright, bro? Everything sorted?”
“Sorted?”
“Edie,” he says as Janey turns around slowly and faces him. “She’s back, yeah?”
I push my chair back and stand, my hands gripping the edge of the desk. “What do you mean?”
Jamie’s expression changes in an instant.
“What the fuck, Rory? Edie had become a friend. I liked her. Everyone did.”
Janey turns back to me for a moment and looks at me with an expression I’ve never seen on her face before.
“She was here to do a job. She wasn’t a friend. When the hell will you realise that people don’t want to be friends with us. They want our money or our power or our influence.” I stride over to the window and look out at the loch. “The girls that dance around you at parties don’t give a damn about you. They love the castle, they love the money. Look at him—” I point accusingly at the portrait on the wall. “For all his grand events, he died alone.”
Jamie stares at me for a moment before he speaks.
“Well, he was a hell of a lot less lonely than you’ll be. You might as well be the hunchback of Notre Dame. Edie genuinely cared about you, and you were too fucking stupidto see it. You know she chewed Anna up and spat her out in the car. She stood up for you—not that you deserved it. She said she wasn’t going to fly home with her and that’s when she got out and started walking.”
Everything inside me turns to solid ice.
“I assumed she’d ring you. Or show up. I dropped her at the crossroads hours ago. She said she wasn’t going back to London.”
“She what?”
“She took her bags. She looked like she meant it. I thought she’d be here.”
I can’t even blame him. This is my fucking fault. Hubris again. Maybe I am my father’s son after all.
Janey’s face is blanched white. “It’s almost dark.”
