They hadn’t been communicating beyond the professional in the last week, mostly because both of them, without mentioning it, were extremely nervous. Lissa nearly wrote “it’s a blind date” but managed to delete it just in time because it wasn’t a date, it was a meeting with someone she had been doing a job share with—professional, if anything. They had already discussed dates they’d had with other people. So. The fact that she hadn’t mentioned it to Kim-Ange had . . . nothing to do with anything.

Cormac also hadn’t mentioned their meeting to Kim-Ange. She would just make a big deal out of it. Plus, she and Piotr were madly in love and snogging up a storm at breakfast time every day and frankly making everyone a tiny bit sick, and nothing would make her happier than to think of the two of them . . . going for lunch, no more, no less, he told himself, nonetheless ironing his best shirt, a yellow check.

He glanced at her message and typed, I’ll recognize YOU. You’ll be the one loudly complaining about diabetic prescribing.

It just makes everything else MORE DIFFICULT, started Lissa, a bugbear that always made him smile.

ROISIN HAD TOLD Lissa to look sensible in court, so she pulled her hair back into a tight bun that made her look more professional than the curls everywhere and put on a sleek houndstooth check skirt suit that she never really got a chance to wear. Paired with a blouse and some smart earrings her mother had sent her (as well as the suit), she looked surprisingly professional, particularly after having spent the last two months either in uniform or wrapped up in woolly jumpers and thick tights, even through the Highlands spring.

She had brought her overnight bag; she was coming back on the night train, which she was rather excited about; it stopped just up the road from Kirrinfief and was patently the best way to get there, even if it was expensive.

All she had to get through was the trial.

Her heart was beating hard all the way to the airport. Being in Scotland had felt safe, protected, away from everyone else. Not having to face what had happened. There weren’t any teen gangs in Kirrinfief, at least not that she’d heard of. Children ran around practically free range, something that had surprised her when she’d first noticed it, but then realized that everyone knew everyone in their small corner of the world; their children were everyone’s children. It was nice, to see children playing in the streets and down on the little shore and not have to worry about them.