“When I go back to London, do you mean?”

“I suppose so.”

“Well, now that the girls are heading back to a fee-paying school, I don’t think there’s much alternative for me other than to get a proper full-time job.”

“Right.”

“Why do you ask?”

“No reason.”

“Oh yeah?”

Patrick laughed. “I was going to ask if you would take on Seascape for me.”

Their lighthearted banter was brought to a sudden halt by Patrick’s request. Dan was able to feign concentration as he picked up speed, guiding the Mercedes around the tight bends in the road. In truth, he was thinking back to what Katie had said about her husband. All that bluster and bravado were just a cover. Patrick knew as well as any that there would come a time when he wouldn’t be able to cope with anything much more than lifting his walking stick.

“What about the guy from Ocean Produce in Aberdeen?”

“I could put him off. Dammit, I’ve waited long enough for him.”

“But he’s got the knowledge, Patrick. I don’t.”

“Keep going the way you are at the minute and you’ll have more knowledge than me in six months.” Patrick paused, flicking his thumbnail against a knot of wood on the handle of his walking stick. “I couldn’t pay you as much as you’d get in London, but it would be a decent enough salary. I’m sure it would be enough to keep the girls at that private school of theirs.”

Dan noted a tone in Patrick’s voice that he had never heard before. It was almost as if the man was pleading with him to stay.

“Patrick, listen, I don’t think that I could have enjoyed myself more over these past few months, and I feel really lucky to have had the opportunity of working with you and getting to know you and Katie and the kids. But I can’t work up here forever. I have a wife in London who would never, in a million years, consider moving to Scotland, and you’ve seen the girls for yourself! London is like a life-support system to them all. I can’t split the family up, Patrick. I have to go back.”

Patrick glanced out of the side window at the pale dawn that glowed red upon the distant wedged slope of the Isle of Eigg. Dan heard him let out a quiet laugh. “You’ll be leaving the cowboy country, Dan. Can you do that?”

Dan let out a long breath. “There always comes the right time for riding off into the sunset, Patrick.”

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