The Empty Cottage

The rain had finally stopped when Isla, Tom and Lucia came over the ridge and saw the cottage. They had been walking through the Scottish Highlands for four days, and after a night in a leaking tent they were cold, wet and in a bad mood. The cottage stood alone at the end of a narrow valley: a small stone building with a slate roof and a thin line of smoke rising from the chimney.

"Someone must live there," said Tom, who was already imagining a fire and a hot drink. "Maybe they'll let us dry our boots." Isla, who had grown up in Inverness and knew the area, wasn't so sure. "It might be a bothy," she said. "That's a free shelter for walkers. There are lots of them up here. But bothies don't usually have smoke coming out of the chimney in the middle of the afternoon."

They knocked, waited and knocked again. Nobody answered. The door wasn't locked, so after a moment of hesitation Lucia pushed it open and called out. The single room inside was warm and tidy. A fire was burning in the stove, a pair of reading glasses lay on an open newspaper, and on the kitchen table there were two mugs of tea. Lucia touched one of them. It was still warm.

"This is a bit strange," Tom said quietly. "Whoever lives here can't have left more than ten minutes ago. The tea's still hot." Lucia pointed at the second mug, which was full to the top. "And they must have left in a hurry. Nobody makes two cups of tea and then walks away without drinking them."

Isla looked around more carefully. There was an empty hook by the door and a muddy patch on the floor where a pair of boots must have stood. "Their coat and boots are gone, so they didn't just pop outside to get some wood," she said. "They must be expecting to be out for a while. But there's no car, and the nearest road is miles away. They can't have gone far on foot."

Tom's imagination was starting to run away with him. "Maybe they saw us coming and hid," he suggested. "Or maybe something happened to them. They could have been kidnapped." Lucia laughed. "By whom? We haven't seen another human being for two days. You've been watching too many crime series."

Then Isla noticed something on the windowsill: a small radio, the kind that mountain rescue teams use, and beside it a notebook. The last line on the open page had obviously been written in a hurry, the letters sloping across the paper: 2:40. Walker injured, east side of the loch. On my way. Lucia checked her watch. It was ten past three. "So that's why the tea is still warm," she said. "Whoever lives here must be part of the rescue team."

"But why two mugs?" Tom asked. Nobody had an answer, so they did the only sensible thing they could think of. They put more wood on the fire, hung their wet socks by the stove and waited. Outside, the light was already beginning to fade.

About an hour later, they heard voices. The door opened and a small woman in her seventies came in, supporting a young man who was limping badly. She stopped when she saw three strangers in her kitchen, and then she smiled. "Well," she said, "you can't be burglars. Burglars don't hang their socks up to dry. Don't just stand there. Help me get this lad into a chair."

Her name was Morag. She had worked as a doctor in Glasgow for thirty years, and since she had retired to the valley she had volunteered with the local rescue team. The young man, a student called Ewan, had twisted his ankle on the rocks by the loch. The second mug of tea, Morag explained, had been for her husband, Angus, who had gone up the hill that morning to look for a lost sheep. "He should have been back by lunchtime," she added. "He must have found it on the far side of the hill. It's always the far side."

Just then, the door opened again and a tall, gray-haired man walked in, carrying a very wet lamb in his arms. He looked at the injured student, at the three walkers sitting by his fire and at the cold mug of tea on the table. "I leave the house for a few hours," he said slowly, "and it turns into a hotel." That night, for the first time in four days, nobody slept in a leaking tent.