Those were the last words that passed between them. Dan lay on his bunk, head turned towards the wall, as he listened to the man hurriedly wheeze his way through his dressing routine. He then thumped his suitcase off the luggage shelf, opened the door, and was gone. Dan reckoned that it was a good twenty minutes before the train eventually stopped in Glasgow, and with a satisfied grin on his face, he fell into a deep sleep.

“Fort William in half an hour.”

Dan had been ready for the attendant this time. He had swung his legs off the bed and stood up as the door was opened so that when he received the tray, he was able to place it straightaway onto the tractor salesman’s bunk. He closed the door and stretched out his cramped limbs, then turning around, flipped up the blind on the window. He blinked twice. “Bloody hell!”

The sky was the colour of dirty washing-up water and the dark hills were only just visible through a curtain of sleety rain. There didn’t appear to be any sign of life forms. No roads, no houses, no animals. Nothing. It was a complete wilderness. This train was taking him to the ends of the world. For at least five minutes, he kept looking out the window, hoping, almost praying that he could find solace in seeing one twinkling light, one smoking fire, one moving car. But all that he witnessed were the hills getting higher and the day getting darker. Just before he turned away, he did manage to spot a huddle of sheep, crammed up tight together in the shelter of a stone wall, and he thought that their expressions of abject misery must have matched his own.

“You girls should all move to London,” he muttered to himself as he turned away from the window. He let out a short, manic laugh. God, he thought, is this what happens when you come up to Scotland? You start talking to sheep?