Back in the Bod, I sharpened the good strong knife, chopped onions, carrots and neeps and put the lentils to soak. It was time for comfort-food. When the soup was simmering on the hob I climbed into the loft, lay on the bed and tried to reconstruct the night of the party. Honestly.

I first noticed Billy when we were inside the house. We’d eaten some of the food and Jerry Eunson had brought out a bottle of whisky. There was music in the lounge. Andrew was playing the fiddle, showing off as he always did, leaping about. But he was a fine player and we all listened. Then suddenly Billy was there. I remember now that he was out of breath. He must have run from his house, just as he flew up the track every morning to catch the school bus. So he hadn’t been out on the grass with us earlier in the evening. I was right about that.

His presence irritated me. He hadn’t been invited. I was growing away from him and I didn’t need his admiration any more. The friendship was starting to embarrass me. At school he was rather a figure of fun. I took his hand and pulled him into a corner. ‘What are you doing here? This is a sixth-year party.’

‘I need to talk,’ he said. ‘I can’t go home until I tell you.’ His face was red and there was snot on his face. His eyes were red and I thought he’d been crying.

I was about to ask him what had happened, when Andrew came in. I’d fancied Andrew for years. I mean, really since he’d started at the school. I’d had other relationships, but they’d been unsatisfactory for one reason or another. He put his arm around me. The gesture was casual, but the pressure on my neck and my shoulder made me feel almost faint.

‘Just go away. Billy,’ I said.

The tabloid paper that ran the story after Eileen and Malcolm talked to them claimed that we bullied Billy at that point. We taunted him and mocked him, and that’s why he wandered into the barn and hanged himself. In the newspaper story there’s the implication that there was some sort of ritual. Almost witchcraft. It was impossible for my parents to stay in the islands with that hanging over them; they’d always been regular worshippers in the kirk. I moved to England, where nobody had heard of Jackie Tait. But I can’t see why we would have taunted or bullied Billy that night. I might have been drunk, but I’d have remembered that. I just told Billy to go away. I never saw him again until I found him in the barn the next morning, and by then he was dead.

After eating the soup I felt stronger. I sat at the computer and began to make my plan, to plot my story. I realized that I would have to meet Eileen again. I had a number of theories surrounding Billy’s death, but I needed information that only she could provide. When I checked my emails I half-expected another message from my stalker, but there was nothing. The threats confused me. I didn’t see how they could fit into the story at all.