It was, frankly, an incredible mess, and now the end of the year was nearly upon them, and she was doing a mental tally and not liking in the slightest what it showed.

One night at the beginning of the year, snuck under the cover of darkness.

One night in the springtime, when the boys went camping with the Scouts.

Three nights: they had managed a long weekend in Edinburgh, when Pam and Charlie had taken the boys on an Outward Bound course they had had free places for.

Saif had been bowled over by the city’s dark, extravagant beauty, its glorious, brimming-over atmosphere, the tiny closes and cobbled steps, the hidden-away bars and vast vistas.

They had stayed in a turret of a hotel they could barely afford, climbed Calton Hill in the rain, eaten every type of food they couldn’t find on Mure, which was, frankly, pretty much all of them. They’d even found, on the corner of an ancient square, a Middle Eastern restaurant, which he pronounced “not bad,” even as Lorna laughed her head off at the sight of him absolutely stuffing his face with baba ghanoush.

She had a couple of photos of the two of them. The sun had shone down and they had grabbed an extraordinary amount of unlikely food from Valvona & Crolla and sauntered to Princes Street Gardens, and they sat out and had an actual picnic in the shadow of the castle, and she had taken a selfie of them both, his head next to hers, laughing and slightly embarrassed at the same time; guilty seeming, always.

But she took it anyway, even though she knew, a million times over, that she couldn’t post it anywhere, couldn’t put it on her social media. She sent it to Flora, who was half dead from breastfeeding and couldn’t do much more than send a weak thumbs-up. But Lorna looked at it all the time. They could be any couple in that photo. They could be normal. If they weren’t in secret. If she wasn’t his children’s teacher. If his wife wasn’t missing. If they could go public . . .

Well, there was no point in thinking about that. They couldn’t go public, they just couldn’t. Little stolen moments, occasionally when he was on call. She hated them being furtive—they both did—it felt grubby and tawdry.

It also felt wonderful, which was very much a part of the problem.

Oh, and Halloween, which really oughtn’t to have happened at all. She blushed slightly. Well, it had been very dark. There had been a lot of parties and a lot of people in and out of houses, and the boys had been away with all their school friends for hours—children could always roam freely on Mure, it was safe as houses.

Six, she counted. Six nights in a year. This couldn’t go on. She brushed out her lovely thick red hair crossly.

THE LITTLE JETTY, in contrast to the rest of the island, was absolutely festooned with lights twinkling in large jars, leading the way to where a red carpet was laid up the steps to the Rock’s front door and a piper greeted them with a lamenting air.