Tommy hesitated over this question. “No,” he said at last. “I don’t think so.”

“No, I suppose we’re more or less the same,” Ken said. He thought for a moment, then added, “We don’t have a vicar every other Sunday now. Once a month it is, over from Islay or Mull.”

Tommy clearly didn’t know how to respond to this.

“Not that there are many people who go,” Ken said. “To church.”

Malcolm wondered why Ken was talking so much about church. Ken didn’t go himself.

“Martha Nairne’s a lay reader,” he said, not sure if he was addressing Ken or Tommy. “She takes some services.”

There was a short pause, then Ken said, “Well, I’d best be getting on. Good to see you,” he added to Tommy.

They said their goodbyes and Ken walked on, Morag trotting beside him.

The second time they encountered someone, the meeting was more prolonged. Heading south again towards Alban Bay on the sixth day of Tommy’s visit, they met Fiona McKenzie coming the other way. Malcolm recognized her pink waterproof in the distance, but she’d already turned the bend in the road where it curved through a rocky pass, and must surely have seen them. They could not turn back without seeming to flee from her.

“That’s Fiona,” Malcolm said to Tommy, wanting, in some way, to prepare him. “Fiona McKenzie. You remember her? She lived down the road from you. A quarter of a mile or so.”

He thought at first that Tommy wasn’t going to reply, but then Tommy said, “Yeah. Of course.”

Unbidden, a memory came to Malcolm: one of Tommy’s outbursts, quite late on. What was it that he’d thrown at Fiona, standing in the middle of the living room? The poor woman had only dropped by to return a dish. Heather’s crystal rooster—Malcolm grasped the memory suddenly, how it had shattered beautifully against the wall like a shower of confetti, perilously close to Fiona’s head, how swiftly he had rushed to get hold of Tommy’s flailing arms while Heather ushered Fiona out into the hall. He had no idea what Fiona’s supposed crime had been, what on earth she might have said to set him off. Tommy had wept about it afterwards—not over Fiona but over the rooster, which he’d loved. But it was just an old ornament, Heather told him sternly; that wasn’t the part that mattered. She made him write Fiona a letter and then she’d taken him round to deliver it in person. Tommy had submitted meekly on that occasion. Perhaps he really had been sorry, too. Malcolm had seen the letter, drafted in Tommy’s rough book and then copied out in his very best handwriting. He couldn’t recall what it had said.

He wondered if Tommy was remembering this too, or if those years were a blur to him.