It was almost dark when I set out and the snow had started again. I should have stayed in and put off my trip to the Anderson house until the morning, but I’m not a very flexible person. When I make a plan I stick to it. I parked at the end of the Anderson track, not worrying about blocking the gate. I thought it unlikely that Eileen would have any visitors, especially in this weather. I’d put on boots and my thickest jacket, but still I didn’t feel properly prepared. There was just enough light for me to see the track, but I wasn’t sure how I’d find my way back to the road without a torch.

All the rubbish in the yard had been covered by snow and the house seemed almost attractive. There was a light in the kitchen window. I knocked at the door. No reply. People don’t lock up their homes in Shetland and I went in, shouting: ‘Eileen! It’s me, Jackie Tait.’ Usually I’d have taken off my boots, but the floor was so mucky that I didn’t think it would matter.

She was sitting in the kitchen. There was a bit of heat coming out from the stove, but not much, and I kept on my jacket. She was wearing layer after layer of clothing: thick woollen tights and socks and some moth-eaten slippers, an old tweed skirt and jumpers, and on top of them all a grey cardigan, long and loose. But despite all the clothing she still looked skinny, and the fine-knit cardigan could have been a shroud.

She turned her head slowly.

‘Where did you get all that stuff for the newspaper article?’ I asked.

‘I never spoke to the reporter,’ she said. ‘That was Malcolm.’

‘And where did he get it?’

‘From you,’ she said, and there was surprise in her voice, so I believed her. ‘He said you’d told him what happened.’

‘I never spoke to him after Billy died.’ None of this was making sense. Facts and theories whirled round my head like the snowflakes outside the window.

‘You posted a letter through the door.’ She turned to face me again, just moving her head, so that she looked like a clockwork toy. ‘A confession. It was your writing. We checked it against a note you left for Billy one day.’

‘Did you show the letter to the police?’

This time she shook her head. The same jerky movement. Click, click. ‘Malcolm never had much time for police. And what would they do? It was suicide, everyone was agreed on that.’

And besides, I thought, the newspaper would pay. Malcolm would get no money from the police.

For a minute I wondered if it were true after all. That night at the party, had we all turned on Billy? Had we teased him and pushed him, mocked his drunken father and his weird mother? The scene seemed almost familiar. I felt that if I tried hard enough I could reconstruct the events in my head. Had he run off into the calm almost-night, then come back to kill himself? To reproach us for our cruelty.