“O Tannenbaum . . .”

Two of the older ladies with grandchildren in the show arrived and joined in loudly and querulously:

“O chraobh na Nollaige!”

And now they really had a party. Once they got to the end of the verse they started going round the tree, and nobody apart from Isla really knew the second verse anyway, so they just did the first one again and then again, as they got faster and faster, until they were whizzing round and round the brilliantly lit statue, singing faster and faster at the top of their lungs, and finally collapsed, all of them, giggling in the snow.

Which more or less started a snowball fight, which Konstantin and Isla got out of the way of as quickly as possible.

“I thought you would be good in a snowball fight,” observed Isla as they marched down the hill, leaving it to the parents to intervene or join in, depending on the personality.

“I am,” said Konstantin gravely. “Too good. I would kill every single one of those children.”

Isla started laughing, she couldn’t help it, as they trudged up the stony lane toward the MacKenzie farm. The van was already parked there, and Gaspard was looking at them crossly for not being there on time to help set up.

“Venez, venez, the lovebirds, come on,” he grumbled, and suddenly neither of them could look at the other.

Chapter 51

T he village descended on the scones and cakes and sandwiches like a plague of happy locusts. Hot mulled cider sat in pots on the oven, and people opened bottles and passed around whisky while the children ran riot over the farm, barely disturbing the beautiful sleepy cows, who eyed them without interest and went back to nosing about the snowy grass.

Flora took one look at Lorna, who came in late, as ever, after closing up the school, and instantly poured her a very large drink and dragged her into Flora’s old childhood bedroom, now full of coats and scarves.

“Tell me everything,” she said, and unable to help herself, Lorna told her everything.

“Oh my God,” said Flora when she’d finished.

“I know,” said Lorna.

“I mean that’s just . . .”

“I know.”

“On the other hand,” said Flora, “it means you haven’t done anything . . . technically wrong.”

“Apart from sleep with a bigamist,” said Lorna gloomily.

“You don’t suppose it means . . . Does it mean he’s free?”

“I don’t think . . .” said Lorna. “I don’t think he can ever be free.”

And her voice cracked.

KONSTANTIN GRABBED ANOTHER two mugsful of the delicious hot cider and went and found Isla in a quiet corner of the kitchen. It wasn’t exactly private, but people were more or less heavily involved with eating and drinking and discussing whether the weather would keep the boats away, deliveries being increasingly important this time of year, as were trips to the mainland for everything you couldn’t necessarily get on Mure, which was, to be entirely fair, quite a lot of things. But Gaspard didn’t like them hanging about for too long and soon sent them into the little lean-to pantry at the back to start washing up, and they rolled their eyes at each other but somehow, even washing up was kind of exciting, Isla thought, when it was with someone you desperately wanted to wash up next to.