“No!” he shouted at her. “ No.” He simply wanted to stop her talking, as if silence would erase the meaning of what she had said.

“Sit down, James,” she said calmly. “ It’s the only way.”

“So Mary never had a secret,” Sarah said. “We were wrong all the time.”

James seemed not to hear her.

“No,” he said. “ It’s not the only way.”

“Mary did have a secret,” George said, very quietly, “didn’t she, Melissa?”

As George turned his attention from James to Melissa, James got up and walked out of the room. It’s been too much for him, Sarah thought. He’s lived with this woman for more than thirty years. He believed that he knew her and now he’s found out that she killed two people. He can’t face it. She thought, even, that he might be physically sick. He looked very ill. When George got up and almost ran after James, she thought he was being insensitive. The man obviously wanted to be on his own.

“Don’t be a fool, man,” Melissa screamed after her husband. “I’ve told you. It’s the only way.”

James was a little younger than George and much fitter. He still worked the croft. I’ve spent too long sitting behind a desk, George thought. I won’t catch him.

James knew exactly where he was going. He ran round the back of the house, past the sheep pen, and through a field of oats. He had still not buttoned the black jacket of his suit and it flapped at the sides as he ran. He looks like a hooded crow with a sleek grey head and black wings, George thought as he walked through the wet stalks of the oats. He went as fast as he could, hoping James might wait for him, that he might after all want to talk.

After the fields of the croft the land sloped down to the sea. George watched James run to the edge of the cliff, to Kell Geo where all the rubbish from the island was dumped, because the water was so deep—all the tin cans, and the rusty cars that would go no more. He watched James pause for a second at the top, then saw him fling himself over to land with the garbage underneath the sea.

George walked slowly to the cliff edge. As soon as James left Kell, George knew that it would end like this. He had been incompetent. He should have foreseen it, but since his arrival at Kell nothing had gone as he had planned. He heard a movement behind him and turned round. He had expected to see Sarah, but it was Elspeth:

“You saw James?” he said.

“Yes. He meant to do it, didn’t he? He did it on purpose?”

“Yes.”

“Why would he do that?”

“He killed an old man. And a child.”