‘You had sex?’

‘Twice that night. Once in the back of the Land Rover, parked on the airstrip, and once in an empty room in the North Light when we got back. It was three in the morning when she left me.’ He paused, added with admiration: ‘She was up at dawn to do the trap round.’

‘And on other occasions?’

‘Not every night. She’d made it quite clear we met up on her terms. She’d come and find me when she wanted me.’ Hugh spoke without apparent resentment. He wasn’t like Perez with his first lover; it seemed Hugh had no interest in forming a permanent relationship. The smile remained in place.

They’d reached the peak of a ridge and now had a view north. The only sign of habitation from here was the lighthouse and that was almost obscured by a fold in the land; only the tower and the lens were visible. Perez remembered when the lighthouse was manned: there’d been a Glaswegian couple with a little boy who’d come to the island school, a bluff retired merchant seaman as senior keeper and they’d all lived in the whitewashed buildings at the foot of the tower. Then the field centre trust had taken it over, raised the money to convert it. From this position he became aware again of how isolated it was.

‘Did she come to find you?’ Perez asked.

‘Oh, yes. At odd times. Once in the middle of the day when everyone else was having lunch. We were in the dorm. Dougie could have come in at any time. But that was what she liked. The excitement. The danger.’

And you? Perez wanted to ask. Did you like it too?

But he could see that Hugh would have found the question ridiculous. Of course he liked it. Sex without complications. Wasn’t that the dream of every young man? And why shouldn’t a woman enjoy it too? Perez would have liked to discuss Angela’s attitude to men with Fran. He suspected Fran would accept it without question. Very little shocked her. He found Angela’s need for pretty boys not so much shocking as depressing. What did it say about her marriage? That it bored her? That she had to find her excitement elsewhere? Did that make Perez boring too, with his plans for marriage, a settled family? Would Fran think him tedious after a couple of years?

Now they were both out of breath and they stopped. Perez took a flask of coffee from a small backpack and handed Hugh a slice of the sticky chocolate concoction that the islanders called peat. His mother had made a batch the evening before. They sat on a flat rock that stuck out of the heather, looked down on the bright blue sea and the wild white waves.

‘Did Angela talk to you?’ Perez asked.

‘Of course we talked.’ Hugh regarded Perez with patronizing amusement. ‘We got on. We were good mates.’

‘You didn’t seem very upset by her death.’