A couple from the south had bought the place, pleased at the price that was asked and that their sealed bid turned out to be the highest. In fact theirs was the only bid. Nobody from Shetland fancied taking it on. They knew its history. Or they believed they did; they’d read the crazy story in the papers.

I parked the car at the top of the bank and looked down at it. The house was low and newly whitewashed, and it seemed that the newcomers had decided to play at the good life because there were sheep in the in-bye fields and they’d made a vegetable garden in the sheltered land furthest from the sea.

I stood, drinking coffee from my flask and looking down at the place where my young life had been spent. Memories chased after each other.

A fifteen-year-old boy died there. His name was William Anderson, known to us all as Billy. He’d hanged himself in the barn that still stands to the side of the house, with a noose made of fishing line. I found him the next morning as I carried the empty bottles to the recycling bin we kept in there. He’d had a lot to drink. That was clear following the post-mortem carried out in Aberdeen. We’d all had a lot to drink, which is why my memories of the night are so hazy and so unreal. I know the facts that I’ve been told, but the pictures are unreliable. That’s one reason why I accepted John’s invitation to spend a month here. I hope the place will make the images sharper and give me confidence in my recollections. The story that I’ve agreed to write during my residency in the Bod will be the story of Billy’s death.

My parents were away at a wedding in Edinburgh. It was the first time I’d been left in the house alone, and of course I planned a party. That would have been the first thought of any teenager in my situation. It would be the end of my last year at school, so a kind of celebration. A rite of passage. This was going to be a glittering party, something that we’d all remember. ‘No jeans,’ I told my friends. ‘Glitzy clothes only. Just because we live in Shetland, we don’t have to look as if we know nothing but the croft.’ I was always a creator of dramatic stories. I dressed the house with fairy lights, raided the freezer for my mother’s baking, bought wine and beer. I was an only child and had been spoilt. My parents knew about the event; I wasn’t planning it behind their backs. My father thought it was great fun, and secretly he would have liked to be there.

It was June. The time of the simmer dim, the long summer dusk that never really turns into night. We began our evening in the garden. My mother had been to the Co-op the day before she went south and bought bottles of cheap cava. Her contribution to the celebration. So there we were, the girls in their floaty frocks and the boys in shirts and jackets, drinking fizzy wine and feeling almost sophisticated. Did Billy Anderson turn up while we were still outside? I drank the wine too quickly and, before we moved indoors, I was already a little drunk. I don’t think he did. I don’t remember him on the grass. I remember the flag irises and the buttercups and the marsh marigolds in the boggy field beyond the garden wall, and the way the low sun caught the colours, but not little Billy Anderson. We weren’t expecting him after all. He hadn’t been invited.