Jamie took the pebble and gave it his own, much more rigorous, inspection. The little disc of water-worn stone looked suddenly very large as it flipped through the boy’s fingers. The day after his mother had been rushed into the maternity unit in Edinburgh, those fingers had barely folded around Callum’s thumb. He smiled at the memory. That tiny, insistent grip had changed his life forever.
Callum walked to the water’s edge and motioned for Jamie to join him. “You want to try and keep your body low,” he said. “Try and throw across the water.” He looked up to see that Jamie was beside him, knees bent into an exaggerated right angle, swinging his arm wildly back and forth towards the loch.
He was his father’s son alright, from his deep-set hazel eyes to his soft jawline and pale skin. His face bore the same intensity that Callum recognised in his own when he was concentrating, and it was already framed by the same mop of dark curls that enveloped his ears and licked at his brow.
“Do you want me to go first?”
Jamie nodded.
With an exaggerated sweep of his arm, Callum snatched up a stone and sent it skipping out across the silt-rich water.
“…nine, ten, eleven, twelve!” they counted together, watching as the stone tripped away, the trail of circular ripples feeding one into the other.
“My turn!” Jamie yelled. His face wrought with focus, he positioned the pebble precisely in his fingers, then crouched down and launched it out into the loch.
It sank without a single jump.
“No matter,” Callum said, watching as the disappointment spread across Jamie’s face. “You see all these pebbles?” He gestured along the sweeping shoreline. “That’s how many goes you’ve got.”
Disappointment morphed into a guarded smile, and Jamie dropped to his knees and gathered up a handful of new skimmers. He seemed to consider the multi-coloured stones carefully before selecting a thin, white one from amongst the greys and pushing it into Callum’s hand.
“Quartz,” Callum said, holding the pebble up to the light. “Ancient tribes used to make arrowheads out of this stuff, you know?”
Jamie’s brow wrinkled. “It’s just a stone, Dad.”
Callum laughed and closed his fingers around the gift. It was one of the things he loved most about his son. When they were together, he was no longer Doctor Callum Ross, Professor of Archaeology. He was just plain old ‘Dad’.
“Are they not scared of Nessie?”
Seated on a pebble-and-jacket throne later that afternoon, Callum followed Jamie’s gaze. His eyes were fixed on the water, where a group of young men were busy sculling around on their backs amongst the ranks of wooden piles. Beyond their shoulders, the loch stretched on into the distance like a vast pupil ringed by the iris of the Great Glen.
“I guess not,” he answered.
“He’s not real, though, anyway, is he?”
There was part of Callum that felt he ought to play it straight, just like his own father back when he and his brother had descended on the loch each year, determined to hunt the beast with nothing but wooden spears and a knackered-up old dingy. Chances are it’s nothing, son. You’re dreaming if you think it’s a dinosaur. Probably a freak sturgeon…
“Nessie? Of course he’s real,” he replied. “How can you not believe in Nessie?”
“But why don’t more people see him then?”
“Well, did you ever think that he doesn’t want to be seen?”
Jamie slurped up a mouthful of ice-cream. “Suppose,” he said. “Do you really think there’s a monster?”
“Of course I do.” Callum lowered his voice to a whisper, “Between me and you, I think there’s more than one.”
“More than one Nessie?”
“Well, there’d need to be for them to survive all this time, wouldn’t there?”
“Why?”
“Well, because…”
The boy’s brow was furrowed. The ice-cream cone hovered just below his chin and a tear of melted raspberry ripple was creeping for his knuckle.
The desire to come clean was there again: Because there’d need to be a viable breeding population, that’s why, son. Daddy Ness would need his and Mummy Ness would need hers and one thing would lead to another…
“Because he’d be too lonely to live on his own all this time, wouldn’t he? He’d need his family with him.”
“Why do you not want to live with me and Mum?”
The question struck Callum in the gut.
“Jimmy Bevan says it’s weird that you don’t live with us,” Jamie continued, “and so did Fraser.”
“Did they now?”
He nodded. “And Fraser called me a dicknose as well.”
Callum offered up the remains of his cone. “I wish I could live with you, Jamie, but you know it’s not that simple.”
“But why?”
“Well, for a start you and your ma live in Edinburgh, and I live in Aberdeen some of the time and in Norway some of the time and all over the place the rest.”
“You could take us with you. I want to see all over the place.”
“What about your school and your mother’s job?”
“But I want to dig up treasure like you.”
“Well, if that’s what you really want, then you’ve plenty of time.” Callum felt relieved that the conversation had moved on before he’d let slip the other reason why he no longer lived in Edinburgh: the simple fact that he and Moira would have ended up throttling each other. “It’s not all about finding treasure, you know. I spend much more time in the library reading dusty old books.”
Jamie looked as unconvinced as ever. But before Callum could say any more, his phone rang and he hurried to answer it.
“Jonas, hi…
“…I’m on Dores Beach with Jamie…
“…you’re where?”
He stared along the crowded beachfront. Sure enough, Doctor Jonas Olsen was standing in the garden of the Dores Inn, set just back from the shore. Phone pressed to his ear, he was waving
