I left my car by the pier at Grutness and walked up the bank. The snow had frozen hard and crunched under my boots. There were no other footprints, so I knew I would be there first. Below me I saw another car pull up beside mine. It seemed I had got there just in time. At the top, right on the edge of the cliff, there was a stone hut, used by the coastguard service as a lookout. The walls were solid enough and a large window, of the sort you’d get in a bird hide, faced the sea. Gannets hovered just below the lip of the cliff. In the spring they would breed there, with puffins and fulmars and kittiwakes. The door stood ajar. It must have been opened recently, because it had scraped the snow from the entrance. John Sinclair was already inside, leaning against the far wall. He must have come up from the other side, wanting to surprise me. He’d always been good at that.

This wasn’t how the story should have played out. I should have been waiting for him, the sharpened kitchen knife from the Bod in my hand. I should have forced him to the edge of the cliff, the knife in his back, and I should have shoved him over. Another terrible accident on the treacherous cliffs of Shetland. Revenge for Billy’s death. And for the death of my parents.

‘You’re early.’ I kept my voice light. Perhaps, after all, it would be possible to rewrite the denouement. ‘In my email I said half-past.’

‘I’m a busy man now, Jackie. Important. I don’t have the freedom to plan my own day.’

‘Not like when you were a teacher with a couple of babies at home,’ I said. ‘You were prepared to drop everything to see me then. You said I was your muse, the love of your life.’

‘It was a difficult time for me. Suddenly tied down with all that domestic stuff.’ He stared out to sea. This had been our special place for stolen meetings. Was he remembering that summer?

‘You killed Billy,’ I said, ‘and you made it look like suicide.’

‘I did it for you!’ He almost sounded as if he believed it. ‘You had your whole life ahead of you. Such a talented young woman! I knew you’d be a writer one day. And Bill was so lippy and stupid, turning everything into a joke. I knew he’d come out with some suggestive comment in class, thinking it was funny. One day someone would realize he was talking about us. Why did you tell him?’

‘I didn’t tell him.’ But I hadn’t needed to. Billy had followed me around like a besotted puppy. He would have seen John and me together. That was why he’d run into the party, all tearful and upset, needing to talk.

‘I came to your party,’ John said. ‘It was late and I hoped to find you on your own, but you were on the beach with some lad. Billy was there, sitting on the rocks, watching you. “Look at that, sir. Andrew and Jackie getting it on. More suitable, don’t you think? At least he’s not old enough to be her father.” I was jealous and angry and I lost my temper. There was a bit of fishing line caught up in the shingle. I twisted it around his neck until he died. He was only a skinny young boy. Easy enough to carry him back to the barn and make it look like he’d hanged himself.’ The words spilled out and he couldn’t stop them. He’d been saving them up for a long time. Was that why he’d invited me to become his own writer-in-residence? He looked at me. ‘Wasn’t I enough for you, Jackie? Did you need to take up with that boy?’