Malcolm nodded. “You take care.” He felt this wasn’t really enough, that there was more he needed to offer Tommy. But it had always been so difficult to say what he meant.

“You too,” Tommy said. They looked at each other for a few moments, then Tommy said, “Well—bye.” And he made to move off.

“Tommy,” Malcolm said, reaching out to touch his arm. “It’s . . .” He stopped, hesitated. “You probably know this already. But you’re nothing like your father.”

He watched his nephew pause at these words. Then Tommy nodded, and smiled briefly. “Thanks. I don’t want to be.”

Malcolm remained where he was as Tommy boarded, waiting for him to appear on deck so he could wave goodbye. He remembered seeing Tommy and Heather off on the ferry twenty years earlier, waving to his nephew as he left the island for the last time. Jill was meeting them in Glasgow to collect Tommy, and then Heather was to return to Litta alone. Tommy, small and pale and stern beside Heather on deck, had not waved back at Malcolm. And who could blame him?

Malcolm wished more painfully than ever that Heather was alive to meet Tommy again. It would have made her so happy. But you couldn’t live your whole life only looking to the dead. Life was a hard struggle, a long dark night, and we had best be thankful for those left to us to love.

When Tom boarded, the ferry seemed even more ridiculously oversized than before. It was almost empty. As he waited for the engine to start up, he got his bearings by walking from empty lounge to empty lounge, each almost indistinguishable from the one before, all of them carpeted in tartan and faintly suggestive of a conference centre: a series of large, abandoned rooms with long windows in which Tom stood alone, surrounded by sea.

An elderly couple came to join him in the lower lounge, each holding a coffee cup. Tom didn’t think he recognized them, but left anyway in case they tried to speak to him. He bought a coffee from the counter in the corner, served by a man so old Tom was worried he wouldn’t survive the crossing. Then, feeling the juddering as the ferry started up, he went out on deck to look back at the island as they moved away.

He was surprised to see Malcolm still standing where he’d left him on the shore, and raised his arm briefly to wave. Malcolm waved back, and then remained where he was, watching as the ferry moved unhurriedly away from land.