12. A Highland Home for Two Sassenachs

With one suitcase each, we boarded the Eurostar in Amsterdam at one in the afternoon. To avoid causing any unnecessary commotion at customs, I opted to leave the chain and the wristbands in the suitcase. The customs check-in at the Amsterdam station went smoothly. Sylvia had to open her suitcase. Upon seeing the contents, the customs officer raised his eyebrows.

“Even old ladies can be kinky,” Sylvia said without batting an eyelid. Giving her another scrutinising look, the young man saw no serious threat in either of us. Arriving at St. Pancras in London, we had to take the Tube to Kings Cross. We used the two hours between trains for a bite to eat and left for Edinburgh at 7pm. We arrived at half-past eleven, and I had seen enough trains for the next two years. Neither of us was brave enough to drive the last 120 km on the wrong side of the road in the dark. So we checked into a hotel 10 minutes from Waverley Station.

“There is no need to lock me to the bedpost,” Sylvia said as I was busy locking the chain with a padlock to the bed.

“You are so right. There is no need at all. You’re not going anywhere; you’re in a strange hotel in a foreign country, right?” I said calmly, carrying on with my work.

“So why don’t you release me and let me go in the middle of the night to the toilet on my own for a change?”

I locked a second lock, just for security. “Because I don’t want to explain to the cops in this beautiful country why you jumped off our balcony and left a nasty bloodstain on their clean pavement.”

Looking at her, I was glad I had not listened to her objections. Four months after losing Koen, and on the cusp of new experiences, life still held no appeal for her. I was tired and disappointed. She might have felt it and crawled closer to me in bed. Within minutes after I got into bed, I was asleep.

The next morning, a cab brought us to a parking lot just outside town. Our brand new to us Ford Fiesta, just over 10 years old, was parked there, courtesy of the car dealer we’d paid £4,500 to. The keys arrived two weeks earlier at our home, allowing us to drive away immediately. I had a fair amount of experience driving on the wrong side of the road. Johan and I had often spent our holidays in the UK, driving crisscross across the country in a rental car. The car seemed clean enough, but the seats were a bit much, so we covered them with a towel. I’d left my car in the Netherlands because it was more comfortable to have the steering wheel on the wrong side.

Driving from Edinburgh to Pitlochry via the M90 and A9 is a stunning journey. After the city, the landscape opens up into soft, rolling farmland dotted with sheep, stone walls, and tidy farmhouses. Once you reach Perth and join the A9 heading north, the scenery transforms. The hills rise, the River Tay follows alongside the road, and the landscape becomes more rugged and richly forested. The Grampian Mountains loom in the distance, and we passed through glens flanked by steep slopes covered in bracken, fir trees, and heather. Near Pitlochry, deep in Tay Forest Park, surrounded by a tapestry of pine forest, rushing rivers, and distant, mist-cloaked peaks. The hills blaze with orange and gold and are breathtakingly beautiful. Sylvia and I take turns pointing out all the things we can see from the road.

Home is where the heart is. Home in Killiecrankie is at the end of a cul-de-sac surrounded by trees. Somewhere between Pitlochry and Killiecrankie, at the end of a dirt road, is the road to nowhere. From the outside, the house looks like any other building in the area. A stone-built cottage or farmhouse with thick walls to withstand the harsh weather. Slate covers the pitched roof, and a chimney serves the fireplace. Small windows with white-painted frames and shutters. The sandstone bricks are ideal for withstanding Scotland’s wet and windy climate. The exposed stone showcases its natural texture and earthy tones, giving the house a rugged and timeless appearance that blends well with the surrounding landscape. Surrounded by the forest, a low stone wall separated a small garden. The house is about 20 meters above the B road from Pitlochry. If you’re driving too fast, you’ll barely see the unpaved track that winds uphill for about a hundred meters to the house. Our mailbox at the start of our dirt road is the only sign that suggests there are actually people living here at the end of this track.

The house is almost big enough for a couple to live in, but cramped for three. It had taken us several days to get rid of the smell of a house that had been unoccupied for years. The living room was completely empty, with not a single piece of furniture in sight. Except for a pile of IKEA boxes in the corner. The small bedroom fit perfectly with a double bed after we’d assembled it. There wasn’t even room for a nightstand. If you crouched down, you could just barely reach your bed. Fortunately, the mattresses were also new and made of good-quality memory foam. The kitchen was crammed with appliances on both sides—not new, but working. It was practically impossible for two people to stand in it, but we had little choice. If we needed to turn around, either Sylvia or I had to jump on the counter so the other could turn around. There were also several boxes in the small attic upstairs. Donald J. probably had a lot of IKEA stock. A desk, an office chair, and a single bed. Neatly packed in their original packaging with Swedish precision.