The next day, they walked together towards Craigmore. Malcolm’s idea was to keep Tommy moving, keep his distress at bay, tire him out so he might at least get some proper sleep. Tommy had come downstairs that morning looking as if he hadn’t so much as closed his eyes all night. Malcolm was worried he would make himself ill.

“Come on,” he said after they’d finished breakfast. “Let’s get some fresh air. We’ll go north and look for seals.”

Tommy didn’t argue. Like a child, he went obediently to put on his boots and waterproof.

Malcolm had thought that once he was outside whatever was weighing so heavily on Tommy might ease a little, but still Tommy seemed preoccupied and miserable as they tramped along the northern loop of the road. Tommy kept his hands in his pockets and his head down, looking only at the pot-holed tarmac in front of him and scarcely replying to Malcolm’s comments on the landscape. Malcolm didn’t know how to help him.

It was not until an hour later when they were finally up on the cliffs and passing the ruined chapel that Tommy said, “There’s something I want to tell you.”

Malcolm made to pause, but Tommy didn’t slow his pace, and didn’t look round. Malcolm realized then that Tommy needed this walk, needed the weather and the wide expanse of sea before them, needed to be side by side and not facing Malcolm, in order to get these words out, whatever they were. So he merely said, “Oh?” and didn’t look at Tommy.

“It’s something about the night it happened,” Tommy said. His words had a slightly flat, mechanical sound to them, as though he was forcing them out one by one, at some cost to himself.

“Right,” Malcolm said. “O.K.”

When Tommy sped up to walk a few paces ahead, Malcolm didn’t try to catch him up, just increased his own pace enough that Tommy wouldn’t have to raise his voice to be heard above the wind on the cliffs.

“I’ve never told anyone,” Tommy said. “Not told anyone my whole life.”

Christ, Malcolm thought. But all he wanted now was to lessen Tommy’s burden, so if he could take part of it himself he would gladly do it. Hand it over, he thought.

But Tommy walked on for some time without speaking, and Malcolm started to fear he wouldn’t be able to bring himself to say it after all. He wondered if Tommy had been mulling this confession over, whatever it was, all night.

“What is it, Tommy?” he said at last.

Tommy said quickly, as though he’d been waiting to be prompted, “It’s about Nicky.” He was walking faster and faster, and Malcolm had to increase his own pace again to keep up.

“O.K.”

“It was my fault he died,” Tommy said in a rush.