“Well, if it was that easy, we could have done it ourselves,” Nicky said. “You could’ve just done it on the beach.”

“We’ll do it that way next time,” Tommy said, though he had some doubts. “Now I’ve seen how it’s done.”

Tommy had been granted a share in the invalid’s privileges, for being brave and for keeping calm in a crisis, as his father put it. Perhaps the best part of the whole thing (even better than the white chocolate) was how proud their father was of them. Their mum was tearful at Nicky’s suffering and relieved to have them home safely, but their dad was proud. They knew because he told them. They were tough lads, he said, to have got themselves home.

“My father . . .” Tom started to say to Malcolm. He stopped, having no idea how to continue. He felt Malcolm watching him, waiting for him to go on. Patient or apprehensive? “My father said Nicky could have broken his neck. He said he’d known a boy who’d fallen on the rocks and broken his neck.”

“Really?” Malcolm said. “Someone on the island? I don’t remember that.”

“I suppose he was trying to make us be careful,” Tom said. He didn’t believe it had been that. He thought that his father had liked to talk about violence.

“Shall we head for home,” Malcolm said, “before the weather closes in?”

“Yeah.”

They turned back towards the cliffs, away from the dark sea.

The next day, Nicky had gone to Oban on the ferry with their mum to get an X-ray, but they came back saying everything was fine. As Nicky was in no further pain, and as there was more white chocolate that night, and as they had pleased their father, both boys were glad overall that the incident had occurred, and often discussed it together afterwards. But mixed with the satisfying sense of drama and their own heroism was an aftertaste of fear: the knowledge which was new, but felt old, that terrible things could happen, and did happen, from out of nowhere, under a seemingly blue sky.

9

On the night that everyone died except for Tommy, they had chicken for tea, with broccoli and baked potatoes.

Afterwards, Tom would remember the food in detail, though he would not, as an adult, remember most parts of the conversation, every interaction, every nuance of feeling. He retained a general sense of it, with the ending clear and the rest blurred.