“Aye,” Malcolm said carefully. “From time to time.”

“I gave Angus MacIntyre a bloody nose. Broke it, I think.”

“That’s right. You broke it.” It hadn’t been the final straw, but it had come close.

“Always felt bad about that,” Tommy said.

“You were just a child.”

Malcolm had enough memories of his own to feel bad about. He had wondered often during that terrible final year with Tommy, and even more so after the boy had left the island, if Tommy had blamed them just as they had blamed themselves, if that was why he was so out of control, why he so often seemed to hate them. Heather had encouraged Tommy to resume his counselling sessions on the mainland during that final year—they had ended when he was nine and had refused to attend any more—but she had been forced to drop it after a lot of shouting and swearing from Tommy, and some hurling over of furniture.

They should have insisted, of course.

“He’s not angry with us, Mal,” Heather had said after one particularly bad row; they could hear the familiar thump-thump from upstairs as Tommy kicked his bedroom wall. “He’s just angry. And he’s in terrible pain. And we’re the only ones here to take it out on. Nobody else is left. He has nobody else left.”

And still, still, they had failed him.

5

The next day Malcolm went out early, with some relief, to help Robert repair the fencing on the cliffs. He had asked Tommy, “Will you be all right, left to your own devices?” and of course Tommy had said yes.

Up on the cliffs by the west coast, Malcolm and Robert worked for several hours in silence, driving fresh wooden posts into the ground and piling up the old rotten ones in the back of Robert’s truck. The wind was up and whipping at their faces, which made conversation difficult anyway. The sheep didn’t come too close, clearly not trusting what was taking place.

Mid-morning, the two men sat side by side in Robert’s truck, sheltering from the wind and drinking coffee from a thermos.

At last Robert said, as Malcolm had known he would, “I hear Tommy’s back.”

“That’s right.”

Robert didn’t say anything else for a time. They sipped their coffee from the small plastic cups.

Eventually Robert said, “It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Since you heard from him.” The closest Robert would ever come to prying.

“A long while.”

“He O.K.?”

“Seems to be.”

“Must be strange,” Robert said. “For him, I mean. Being back here.”

“Aye.”

“Strange for you too.”