Tide Read Free

across Buchanan Street. “He should come back soon,” she replied without missing a beat. “I spoke to him last night.” A lie, of course. Lying was something the Midnight family was exceptionally good at. “And he says he has more or less done all he needs to do in London.”
    “That’s great news. So when is he coming back?” Juliet insisted.
    “Like I said, soon.”
    Juliet raised her eyebrows. “Before or after Christmas?”
    “After, probably.”
    Juliet sat back and sighed. “Sarah, that’s over two weeks away. You know you can’t stay in that house alone, it’s stated in your parents’ will.”
    “Well, who’ll tell the solicitor? Nobody. Unless you do.”
    “You know I agree with James’s and … Anne’s decision.” Juliet closed her eyes briefly. She still found it difficult to mention her dead sister’s name. “You can’t live alone. It’s not safe.”
    “Two months is not long. And anyway, I’m going to Islay for Christmas.” Now was as good a time as any to tell her aunt that piece of news.
    Juliet frowned. “What? On your own?”
    “No, of course not. With Nicholas.” She made it sound as if she were surprised her aunt hadn’t worked that out for herself. She hadn’t asked Nicholas yet, but she was in no doubt that he would agree.
    “Oh, Sarah. You’re not spending the first Christmas after …” Juliet took a deep breath. “We want you to spend Christmas with us. We’re your family …”
    “I know, I know …” Sarah felt a pang of guilt. But the first Christmas without her parents, in the company of Juliet and Trevor and her giggly cousins was too much to bear. She wrung her fingers.
    “Sarah, please. Do it for me, at least.” Hurt and disappointment were painted all over Juliet’s face, and Sarah’s determination wavered for a second. But no. She had to do this. She had to go back to Islay and try and unravel the mysteries that surrounded the Midnight family. She needed to know the truth about Mairead Midnight, the aunt Sarah didn’t know she had until Sean told her. Before that, nobody had mentioned Mairead. Sean didn’t know anything about the circumstances of Mairead’s death, aged only thirteen, because Harry himself didn’t know. Why had it all been kept secret? Why had any memory of her aunt been erased, as if she’d never existed?
    Sarah hoped that on Islay, in their ancestral home, she could unravel Mairead’s story, and her own story too. Maybe she would begin to understand herself better. She had been a sheltered little girl, and all of a sudden she was a young woman, alone to face a world full of secrets. She was a huntress, bearer of powers she had to learn to control and use to save her own life, and the lives of others. The changes in Sarah’s life, in her perception of herself, had been too fast to allow her to grasp and fully own her new identity. She needed to stop and look back, to get her bearings before taking the next steps. Islay was the place to do it.
    How could she convey all that to Aunt Juliet, who knew and understood nothing about the world of the Midnights?
    She couldn’t.
    Sarah gathered their empty cups and put them on a tray. She had to stop the compulsion to wipe the table, clearing the crumbs away. “Aunt Juliet, I need to go back to Islay. I need to be … near them. I hope you understand.”
    Juliet sighed. “I don’t . We might not be Midnights, but we still love you. We want you to be with us. And we do our best, you know.”
    A touch of resentment had seeped into Juliet’s tone. When James Midnight had appeared on the scene all those years ago, her sister’s life had immediately shifted to focus on him and his charismatic family. Juliet and her parents, who had died one after the other not long after Anne’s wedding, had felt side-lined, forgotten. As if they couldn’t quite match up to the golden clan, the charmed Midnights. James never paid much attention to Anne’s family. To him, they simply didn’t