He stopped sharply where the dunes slipped down towards the bay. The shore was washed clean by the gales, and I could see where he’d been with the ancient tractor, raking up seaweed to fertilize the light shell-soil. ‘Look.’

There was an overhang in the dunes – the recent wind had eroded them, making wave-shaped sculptures held together by marram roots. A hand reached out of the sand. A skeleton. No flesh. Peat preserves bodies, but sand allows for decay. The bones were perfect, the fingers intact. It could have been a sculpture too. There are no ground-predators in Uist to disturb a body.

I realized that I’d been expecting this since the phone call in the middle of the night and my father’s urgent summons. If my mother wasn’t dead, then John Ash had come back to haunt me.

He was one of the wanderers, the sad and the lonely boys who came to Balranald for comfort or escape. He turned up late one night. I think he’d walked from the ferry, which is miles away. Lottie had taken to him at once. I was her only child, and as strong and stubborn as my father. An ugly cuckoo in her nest. John was soft and brown-eyed. He was the companion Lottie had always wanted, dependent and pliable. And I’d killed him.

I crouched on the sand and looked more closely at the hand. On one finger there was a silver ring, loose because there was no flesh to hold it. It was tarnished now, but I knew that it would be engraved with a Celtic pattern, Lottie’s trademark. She still made jewellery to sell at Taigh Chearsabhagh, the arts centre in Lochmaddy, and she’d handed out these rings to her favourites. I stood up and turned to my father. The beach was empty, but it was a fine day and soon somebody would be along to walk a dog or take photographs of the gulls. ‘Why did you call me?’

‘I didn’t know what else to do.’ Another first. My father was famous for his certainty.

‘When did you find him?’

‘Last night. I waited until your mother was asleep before I phoned you.’

He looked at me and I saw again how old he was. When John Ash arrived at Balranald that summer, Peter had been at the height of his powers. He’d just published The Secrets of Soil and it had become an unexpected bestseller. The commune was thriving. Three families lived and worked there, beside the hangers-on. Peter was living the dream, cultivating the machair in the old-fashioned way. He was an authentic crofter who happened to be articulate, educated and good-looking. Charismatic. And, like all gurus, he had his disciples. John had travelled a long way to seek him out and worship him.

It was humid and thundery the day of John’s arrival, midges swarming over the boggy ground near the house. I was in the kitchen with Lottie when he knocked at the door. He stumbled over the step, exhausted, and Lottie reached out to steady him. I was seventeen then and red-faced after days in the sun, difficult and desperate to fly the nest. John was in his early twenties, a frail university dropout who’d lost touch with his parents. Lottie loved pretty things, and John was very pretty. She took to him immediately, and Peter always needed admirers, so John joined the commune as wide-eyed believer, farm labourer and surrogate son.