That summer I took the train to Scotland alone.

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‘Elvis,’ Ted called as I carried my bag into the hall. ‘We’re in the TV room, watching.’ He squinted beyond me at the spitting rain. ‘Where’s Bea?’

‘Not coming.’

His face fell.

Janey was sitting on the floor, her arms slipped from the sleeves of her jersey. ‘Just you?’ She rose to say hello.

Ted slumped on to the sofa, his long legs bent, his feet in brothel creepers, his fingers drumming on the bones of his knees. ‘Sorry.’ I looked behind me, as if my sister might appear.

All afternoon we watched Elvis’s old films. Elvis as a cowboy, a soldier, a surfer in nothing but his shorts. By the time we reached the news I was a wreck. How had I come to him too late? And when the headlines reannounced his death, showing him – The King – aged and bloated, sweat in runnels down his face, Janey protested ‘No!’ and to preserve his dignity we switched off the TV.

There was a fire lit in the nursery, and the table was laid with three choices of cake. Val, the governess, sat between Timothy and Maud, the youngest Colquhoun children, ensuring that they start with something savoury, and although we were beyond her jurisdiction, we lined up, pressing sliced bread into the toaster, slathering on sandwich spread before piling our plates with biscuits and cake. ‘Hello,’ I said, as I sat down. Val blinked, curious, and I wondered as I often did at Craigmont if any of the adults knew that I was there.

Once I’d gone with Janey in search of her mother. ‘What is it, darling?’ She was writing letters in the floral study, her hair pinned softly around her head, her grey eyes sloped like Ted’s. When Janey didn’t answer she suggested we pick raspberries. ‘Mrs H is making a pavlova, she’ll be awfully glad of the help.’

I nodded, eager. I had a great desire to do as she asked, and as I reached the door I felt her gaze, and not for the first time I caught her puzzled frown. Janey and I were silent as we moved between the fruit canes. She’d wanted to ask if we could take a trip to Edinburgh, but to get the Edinburgh train we’d need a lift to Berwick, and there’d be no one spare to drive us, not with the Americans, who’d arrived the day before. Then there was the money for our tickets, or lack of it, which was why there were Americans, whose fortnightly stays, during which they’d be given the full Scottish Country House experience, were to go towards the scheme for saving Craigmont. Shooting and stalking, a formal dinner hosted by Sir Hew and Lady Colquhoun, and in the mornings, scrambled egg and haggis served in heavy, silver-lidded tureens.

That summer all the children except Timothy and Maud were banished to the east wing, to a flat with kitchen cupboards stocked with tins. Tomato soup, baked beans, and our favourite, ravioli. We catered for ourselves, every meal except for tea. Soon the table was so heaped with unwashed dishes that we ate breakfast on the floor. On earlier visits Bea had slept in with Daphne – the second-oldest girl – while I’d shared Janey’s bedroom. To get from there to the bathroom you had to pass the Egg, a dome that filtered light into the hall, where, even in the daytime, there were ghosts. No one ever went alone. To ask for company was allowed, and clasping hands we’d run together, fast. ‘Wait for me!’ I’d call as I pissed, and Ted, who’d taken to playing drums in the attic and swearing he’d not been up there for years, even Ted would wait.

After tea we watched another film. ‘The first Elvis movie that isn’t in black and white,’ Ted told us at the start of Loving You.

‘Shhh.’ Janey held a knuckle to her mouth. The television was ancient and had to be thumped to get it started and we could only wonder how much more beautiful Elvis might have been in colour. By the time the credits rolled my heart was ragged. The melt of his eyes, the swivel of his hip. I wanted him to live again. I’d dress in jeans and gingham. This time I’d be there.

I’d inherited the Colquhouns as they’d inherited me. Bea had befriended Daphne on a visit to London, and they’d begun writing to each other. Daphne, miserable at boarding school; Bea, unhappy at home. That next summer Bea had begged our father to drive us to Scotland, and, surprisingly, enthusiastically, he’d agreed. I’d sat in the back of his car eyeing myself in the side slice of mirror while he drove so fast towards the border we were in Wales before we found we’d taken a wrong turn. ‘There’ll be friends at Craigmont for you too,’ Bea promised. I was nine, and I’d wanted to stay with our mother.

Janey was ten then, fair and watchful; Ted, eleven, dark hair curling to his collar. I’d trailed after, across the lawns, through the walled gardens and out around the front of the house. Ted had a pot-bellied pig, Janey a horse once owned by the eldest, Marina, who’d long since lost interest, choosing instead to drive into the Highlands with my father. It was the year Ted was starting school. ‘What’s school like?’ he’d asked me and I’d shrugged. I didn’t know. It was a bit like school.

There was a chapel at Craigmont, built into the east wing of the house, and there’d been a christening for Timothy who was six months old. Marina was to be a godmother and when, an hour before the service, neither she nor my father had returned, I caught Lady Frances looking at me with that soft crease of a frown.

Janey was nudging me. The television had faded to a speck and Ted took my other hand and the three of us snaked from the room. We edged past the nursery, and the closed doors where the Americans now slept, hurrying when we reached the Egg, running down the staircase where Colquhoun ancestors in hunting dress and white frilled shirts looked down from the walls. The scent of rose dust floated up, and as we passed the hall table I trailed my fingers through the dried husks of the flowers. From here we skidded across flagstones, past the boot room where once, searching for gloves, I’d found Sir Hew camouflaged by coats. ‘Sorry.’ I’d backed away, and in my confusion found myself in the gun room where rifles were displayed in long locked cabinets, ammunition in shallow drawers below.

‘Don’t be cruel,’ Ted crooned and then he stopped. ‘Did you hear that?’ Lowering his head he whispered, ‘Maybe it was him?’

‘Shut up!’ Janey shivered.

Ted raced ahead along the corridor and pushed through the door that led into the kitchen. The kitchen was industrial. An eight-ring range built against the wall; two sinks, side by side. Pans, scoured, hung from hooks; knives glinted in ascending size. We’d made toffee here one winter, melting sugar, butter and vanilla extract, turning the heat so high it boiled, and when the ruined pan had been discovered we’d faced Mrs H’s fury and Lady Colquhoun’s disappointment. Even now I could feel the molten mixture sticking to my teeth as we stood and hung our heads.

Ted lifted down a tray of eggs and, pouring a sloop of oil into a pan,cracked one against the edge. The white frayed, turning lacy as he added another and a third. ‘Let’s light a candle for him,’ Janey said when we’d heaped our plates and left them in a sink, and collecting bikes, thrown down, we screeched along the hall. The chapel lay behind a heavy door. It smelt of damp and incense, and we hushed our voices as we stepped inside. Ted struck a match which died, and then fumbling in his pocket he brought out a lighter – Zippo – and spun it till it caught. The flame illuminated his face, the black length of his lashes, the twist of his wide mouth, and when he held the lighter out our fingers brushed. Another, tighter flame flared up inside me. ‘In nomine Patris …’ Ted intoned as I lit the taper. We sat in the back pew and watched the flicker of our candles while Janey sang ‘Love Me Tender’ as softly as a hymn.

The next day Marina arrived. She hugged her siblings, and even though the last time I’d seen her in London she’d kicked my father in the shins, she held me warmly in her gaunt embrace. ‘Are the Yanks still here?’ She stepped over the dishes on the floor. When Janey said they were, she swivelled round. ‘Let’s have some fun, we’ll need the little ones. Where’s Daphne?’

Ted and Janey shrugged.

That night we filed into the dining room as Sir Hew was raising a toast. ‘Hungry.’ Marina had rehearsed us. ‘No food. So long.’ We stood mournful by the fire.

The Americans froze. The women’s mouths dropped open. One pointed at Timothy in pyjamas, a smear of ash across his cheek.

‘Most amusing.’ Lady Frances stood. ‘Did I fail to mention there’d be entertainments?’

‘Off with you.’ Sir Hew’s usually flushed face was brick, and he staggered up and ushered us from the room, lingering on the landing to hug Marina – ‘Darling girl’– and hang Timothy, briefly, upside down.

‘Papa?’ Maud held out her arms.

‘Bed.’ He ruffled the tangle of her hair.

He turned away then, and we turned away too, shepherding the small ones to their room where they cried so wretchedly Val appeared and asked what did we think we were doing making trouble when there was trouble enough at hand? We wandered out into the gardens where we sat on the stone wall that divided the lawn from fields. It was a clear night, the stars cracking through the black, and when Marina offered up a pack of Camel, Ted pulled out a bottle. Tonic, the label said, although its contents were a mix of browns. ‘I topped it up, an inch a day.’

‘That’s the way,’ Marina laughed, and the drink was passed round.

My first gulp scorched, I spluttered, but the next I swallowed and kept down. I lay back on the nibbled lawn and looked up at the sky. There was the Milky Way, and the Plough, Venus the brightest planet of them all.

‘The planet of lurve,’ Ted said when I pointed it out, and I held my breath, our shadows overlapping, as he nudged his foot against mine.

*

That winter, after Christmas – our first Christmas without Bea – I arrived once more at Craigmont, alone. The trees along the drive were bare. Snow laced the fields, and the lake had thickened into ice. Ted and Janey had their old rooms back, and we spent long hours in Janey’s bed, too cold to venture out. Only the nursery was warm, and one small kitchen where Val prepared meals. On Val’s night off Lady Frances made a macaroni cheese and we all sat round, with extra chairs squeezed in, and she asked what did everybody think, should she have another baby?

Marina was at home, and so, unusually, was Daphne. ‘Oh do!’ Voices rose. ‘Have one more!’

Only Daphne was silent.

On New Year’s Eve we planned to have a party but there was no one who lived near enough to come. ‘Call Bea,’ Ted suggested, ‘she’ll know what to do for fun,’ but there was no answer when I rang.

We trudged around the grounds, sipping from tonic bottles, roaming across the muddied snow, searching out fresh drifts between the lanes of box, falling against branches, showering ourselves with flakes. Vinska, we named the brew we’d made – whisky, vodka, gin – (we’d been topping up our bottles from the drinks tray) and as we drank we concocted a moneymaking scheme of vast potential. Vinska, we decided, could make more for Craigmont than the hosting of Americans who, according to Sir Hew, cost more than they were worth. ‘When you inherit,’ Janey nudged her brother, ‘you’ll be rich enough to instal central heating.’

‘I’ll have rock festivals in the grounds, with Vinska as the sponsor.’ Ted spun around. We agreed this was an exceptionally good plan.

There were three hedges that led into an ornamental garden, and as it neared midnight we climbed on to their boxy tops and bounced as if on beds. ‘Ten, nine, eight …’ Ted lost his footing, and although he yelled as he was falling, once landed, he lay on the ground and smiled. ‘Coming down!’ Janey threw herself off, and closing my eyes, I followed. The snow was thinner than it looked and I was too winded to speak.

My Vinska was half-gone when we headed for the lake. ‘If only we had skates,’ Janey said, but as we stepped on to the ice our legs flew out from under us and we lay there on its glassy surface, snorting and choking, our laughter booming through the dark. Up we got, blind with tears. Down we crashed. My spine was jelly, my insides ached. My ears burned so hotly that they itched. A great white crack appeared, and we ignored it. I hit my head, and struggled up, but the next time I fell I crawled to where the others lay, and Ted dribbled the last of his drink into my mouth.

The following day I couldn’t move. There were black bruises on my arms and legs. I looked across at Janey. Her face was pale, her hair tangled with leaves. I had no memory of how we’d got here from the ice. Only of Ted, stretched out in the middle of the lake. I sat bolt upright, and when the razor pain that seized my skull had dulled, I hobbled from the bed. Ted’s door was closed. I knocked, and when there was no answer I stepped in. The room was cold. There was frost on the inside of the windows, clothes stiff on the floor. Ted lay on the bed. One shoe was off, the sock dark with wet. I crept closer, put a finger to his cheek. ‘Ted?’

His hand sprang up and gripped me. I screamed, and he yanked me in against him. ‘Warm me up,’ he ordered, breathing out hot fumes, and I pulled the quilt around us both, feathers spiking through the paisley silk. ‘That’s better.’ He hooked a foot around my own. I could feel the long bones of his leg pressing against mine. ‘Don’t move.’ He drifted back to sleep.

Janey was cool with me that day. She filled a bath and lay in it and didn’t invite me in. Later she wrote a letter to her friend Christel, a girl from school she’d told me had the surname Chanda-Lear, but I saw the envelope when she’d addressed it: Brookes. And I’d believed her.

Ted was cool with me too. I had moved, after an hour, when he’d shown no sign of waking, and I’d crept numbly back to Janey’s room where she surveyed me with hard eyes. Ted looked ashen when he sidled in, and he’d sat, wrapped in a blanket, groaning, suggesting hangover cures, each one more disgusting than the last, until Janey told him to get lost. But after tea, when I asked if anyone was thinking of making a trip to the loo, Ted stood and ambled out into the hall. We didn’t hold hands, not even as we passed the Egg, but once we were safely on the other side, he stumbled as if by chance into an alcove and, stooping down, pushed the hair from my face. ‘You all right?’ His breath smelt new again, of cake.

‘You?’ I waited, and to encourage him I closed my eyes.

It worked. There was the touch of his lips. Then harder, knocking out my breath as our teeth clashed. He pulled away, and we ran on.

‘Don’t leave,’ I called as I locked the door, and although he said he wouldn’t, when I came out he’d gone.

*

The following summer the Americans were there again. ‘Damned nuisance,’ Sir Hew cursed as he slid a flask against his hip. There were worn patches on the sleeves of his jacket and his trousers flapped against his legs.

‘Do be careful.’ Lady Frances waved him off.

‘I’m always careful.’ He kissed her powdered cheek.

The three of us ranged through the guest bedrooms placing scribbled spells between the pillows, a brewed black potion on a nightstand, a lollipop that said Fuck Off. From out on the estate the sound of gunshot echoed.

We’d written to each other, Ted and I, our letters not so different from the ones exchanged with Janey. Complaints about parents. Complaints about school. Sketches of guitars. Song lyrics copied out. My love to Bea, Ted always ended, although I hardly saw her. Did that mean they weren’t in touch?

Now I was here, we were shy. ‘One more year,’ Ted said as we made pancakes in the kitchen, and he took an egg and threw it so high it broke against the ceiling, and slowly, stickily dripped down. ‘Then what will I do?’

‘I thought you were going to be a drummer?’

Ted whisked the batter. ‘I can’t be a drummer. One: I’m rubbish. Two: I’ll have to take over this place.’

‘Not for years,’ Janey tried. ‘Papa, he’s …’ They looked away from each other.

Sir Hew had formed a society for the protection of the Loch Ness Monster. If anyone dared mention that the monster may not, in fact, be real they were shot down with a stream of invective as fierce as it was funny. Now, instead of stalking, he suggested he drive the Americans to Loch Ness. Lady Frances surveyed him, calmly, asking where would their guests stay when they arrived? Were they planning to camp?

‘Then I’ll take the children.’ We were in the small kitchen eating macaroni cheese, and he cast his eyes around the enthusiastic crowd, squinting a little when he encountered me.

‘Yes!’ Fists thumped against the table.

In a break between Americans we set off, streaming out of the house and into a white and rusting van. Timothy and Maud sat with Marina in the front. Ted, Janey and I lolled on an old carpet in the back. ‘Where is Daphne?’ Lady Frances looked in at her husband, but he hooted his horn and we drove off.

The drive to Loch Ness was long. We stopped to eat sandwiches by the side of the road, and then again several hours later when Ted dropped his cigarette between the hollow panels of the doors and Sir Hew pulled over to douse the flames with lemonade.

It was late afternoon when we arrived, and the loch was bathed in light. Small ripples lapped against the shore and we sat on a pebbled beach and looked out across the water. ‘Where’s Nessie?’ Maud  wanted to know.

‘Loch Ness is one hundred and twenty-six fathoms deep.’ Sir Hew raised his binoculars.

‘What’s a fathom?’ Timothy asked.

His father scanned the surface. ‘Full fathom five thy father lies; of his bones are coral made. Those are pearls that were his eyes.’

‘Papa.’ Maud’s lip trembled. ‘Say a different one.’

‘About as long as …’ he looked around, and finding his tall son ‘… as Ted.’

When we’d sat there for an hour Marina kicked off her shoes. She unbuttoned her shirt and tossed it on to the stones, and like a stork, she hopped out of her trousers. She was tall, her hair cut short. Green veins ran below her skin. ‘I’ll find your monster, Papa.’ Wearing nothing but knickers, white, with the elastic loose, she waded in. We watched as she sliced through the loch. We watched until she was out of sight.

‘It’s bloody freezing.’ Ted stuck in his hand, and we waited, craning out across the water: at the mountains, distant on the other side; at the shadow of firs where the loch turned.

‘Where is she?’ Janey’s voice was high. The lowered sun was in our eyes, catching at dark patches that might be her, that might be gulls.

Timothy threw a stone. It disappeared with a gulp. Sir Hew roamed with his binoculars. ‘Patience,’ he said, unsteady.

Then Maud began to squeal. Marina was rising from the shallows. Her lips were blue, her arms and legs chafed red. Janey ran to the van and, finding no towel, dragged out a blanket, shaking off the crumbs.

‘Nessie would like to thank you.’ Marina turned to her father and saluted. ‘For keeping the faith.’

Sir Hew bowed his head.

*

‘These all yours?’ the barman asked when we found a pub still serving food.

‘Hope so.’ Sir Hew replied.

I pressed myself against the flocked wall of the dining room and did my best to fit in while Sir Hew ordered the drinks. Whiskies and lagers, and lemonade to make up for the bottle that was lost. We ate scampi and chips doused with tartare sauce, and when it was dark and the pub was closing, we went back to the van and lay down.

I woke in the dark, the jut of Ted’s knee against my back. Above the engine’s roar I heard Marina. ‘You need to rest.’ The van shuddered, shifted gear. ‘Papa?’ The road rushed away beneath us.

When I next woke it was light, and again we were parked by Loch Ness. Sir Hew was crouched on the shingle. He had the binoculars raised to his eyes. ‘We’re hungry,’ Timothy complained.

Ted was asleep beside me. Marina crawled in and shook his shoulder.

‘Ted?’

He sat up, bleary.

‘Can you drive us?’ We’d all seen him rattle the trailer across fields. ‘Papa’s not …’

Sir Hew was wading into the lake. ‘Come back!’ We splashed out after him, seizing his shirt tails and his sleeves. Timothy and Maud held tight to his jacket and tugged. Slowly, reluctantly, he wheeled around, a great, shaggy cormorant, his wingspan wide. Marina led him into the van where he sat and shivered, the blanket draped over his head.

Ted gripped the wheel with both hands. ‘Where to?’

‘Home,’ we chorused and he revved the engine and pulled onto the road . We sang to encourage him. ‘One man went to mow’. ‘Twelve green bottles’. ‘Speed, bonnie boat’.

‘Let’s go to Skye!’ Ted swerved past a sign, but when no one answered he kept on towards Craigmont.

__________________________________

From My Sister and Other Lovers by Esther Freud. Copyright © 2025 by Esther Freud. Excerpted by permission of Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.