The flames of the fire dance in the blade of his knife and I fall silent, remembering the hours spent in that boat. The sea was so black and deep and the wind so cold you’d wish yourself back home, but suddenly there’d be a tug on the line, then another, and you’d pull it up eagerly, one hand over the other, until you saw them – four or five, sometimes more, their silver backs glinting like swirls of mercury. Then my father would heave them over the side and rip out the hooks because I was too squeamish, and out the lines would go again.

‘What were you fishing for?’ Duval asks.

‘Mackerel, mostly, but lythe and saithe as well. Sometimes, though, you’d be out there and catch nothing. It was like someone had stolen all the fish in the ocean and you’d just sit there, hauling the line up and down till your fingers blistered and your face was raw from the saltwater spray. Then the weather would turn nasty and these huge waves would swell and roll towards you and the boat would rock madly.’

‘Were you scared?’

‘Not really. I sort of loved it.’

‘Why am I not surprised?’ He holds out his hand for the third trout.

As a child I was scared of touching the fish once they were dead and, knowing this, my father would look into the baleful eyes of each and give it a personality. ‘This one is a bully who has learned the error of his ways. This one is too shy to speak to girls. This is Macbeth after killing Duncan.’ Afterwards he would take me home and comb the mackerel scales out of my hair. He tried to be gentle, but he always pulled the knots too hard.

‘You’re looking very pensive all of a sudden. What are you thinking?’

I glance up to see Duval smiling quizzically.

‘Oh . . . nothing really.’ Actually I’d been thinking that it was a mother’s job to pick mackerel scales out of her daughter’s hair but it only sounds self-pitying when I voice it out loud.

‘Children expect their mothers to love them, no matter what. Those who don’t get this tend to feel cheated the rest of their lives.’

I prod the fire with a stick. The wood has burnt down and the embers glow red.

‘I just think that if someone really has to leave, if they really feel they have no choice, then why does it have to be forever? Why does it have to be all or nothing?’

Duval lays the filleted trout in the pan. ‘Sometimes extreme choices are the ones you get faced with. All or nothing. Life or death.’

‘You think like an outlaw.’

‘Maybe,’ he agrees.