“Kate!” Patrick’s voice boomed along the passageway from the small downstairs bedroom. “Is Dan here yet?”

“Yes, he is,” Katie called out. She walked across to the sideboard and took a wodge of kitchen towel from the roll and blew her nose. “He’s just coming.”

“Well, tell him to come and give me a hand, otherwise we’ll be late.”

Katie shrugged her shoulders. “Well, as you say, I’d better just let him keep going.”

Putting his hand on her arm, Dan gave it a quick, reassuring squeeze before leaving the kitchen and heading along the passageway to Patrick’s bedroom.

“Did I ever tell you about the time I bought prawns from Newfoundland?” Patrick asked as they drove past the dark silhouette of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s statue at Glenfinnan.

“No, I don’t think so.”

“What a gas. The most expensive experiment I ever tried, but by God, it was worth doing just for the thrill of it all.”

“What happened?”

“I bought live prawns and chartered a plane to fly them overnight back to London. I wanted to see if I could get them into Billingsgate the next morning still crawling in their boxes.”

“And did you succeed?”

Patrick shot him a challenging look. “Yes, of course I did.”

“But it wasn’t cost-effective.”

“No, it certainly wasn’t. I thought that I’d be allowed to travel with the prawns in the cargo plane, but they wouldn’t let me.”

“So how did you get back?”

“Well, I wanted to arrive in the UK before the cargo, so I did the only thing I could do. I caught a flight to New York, then took Concorde.”

Dan glanced at him and laughed. “And that’s where the profit went.”

Patrick smiled. “Sort of.”

Dan signalled to overtake a lorry. “You are bloody mad, Patrick,” he said as he accelerated past it.

“I’d give any part of my useless body to do it all over again, though.”

“What? Fly live prawns from Newfoundland?”

“No, maybe not from there.” He gave Dan’s arm a light nudge. “But I’m thinking about it. If the opportunity arises, then I’m off.”

Dan turned to look at the man, his face seeming even more gaunt in the eerie green light that shone from the Mercedes dashboard. “How are you feeling, Patrick?”

“Shit.”

“I thought so. You have to take it easy, mate. If not for your own sake, then for Katie’s.”

Patrick grunted out a laugh. “Have you two been conspiring against me?”

“No, we have not. I just know that she would be lost if anything happened to you.”

Patrick turned and shot him a wink. “Nothing’s going to happen to me, my friend. Not if I have anything to do with it.”

No further word passed between them until Dan dropped his speed to drive through the village of Arisaig.

“What are your plans, Dan?”