He didn’t feel things deeply, Fiona thought as Gavin picked up his newspaper again. He never had. But wasn’t it true that she’d loved that about him once, how easily he took life, how sensible and matter-of-fact he was? Her own family had always been histrionic; it had driven her mad, how everything was always a big drama for her mother, how everything had to be picked over and gone into. Fiona had fled at nineteen into Gavin’s no-nonsense embrace. But that was the problem. Almost everything you did as an adult was a reaction against your upbringing, so you ended up marrying your opposite in a bid to escape your family, not realizing that it was already too late. They had already had their way with you, burrowed into you until one day you looked in the mirror and saw your own mother or father staring back at you, having bided their time and then emerged like a well-fed parasite from beneath your skin. Fiona had over-corrected in choosing Gavin, and found as the years passed that rather than growing into each other, their differences had become more pronounced. Gavin must surely be aware of this too, aware that he should have married someone practical like Heather or Kathy. Fiona had enough insight to know she infuriated her husband sometimes, how patient he had trained himself to be with her.

Then there was Stuart (who perhaps took after her more than Gavin), who was moody and thin skinned and never seemed to want to visit them. She worried about him, and knew Gavin did too. His life, she feared, had not been happy. The divorce had been painful, and she still wasn’t sure Stuart had recovered. He didn’t see his children much, though Joanne was very fair about things like that. Fiona and Gavin saw them hardly at all. Stuart’s new wife Lucy seemed to work long hours and didn’t want children. Fiona supposed she herself was to blame for many of her son’s mistakes, because parents usually were, and most especially mothers (Gavin had not helped her enough; Gavin had been unconcerned). But somewhere deep down she also blamed the Bairds for Stuart’s absence from the island, though she knew really this had nothing to do with why her son kept away.

Still, it was true that the Bairds had brought horror to the island. And Fiona blamed them for it, blamed John of course, but also Katrina, and even Tommy, because he was the living reminder, and because he knew things they didn’t, had seen things nobody should see, and now here he was again, drifting about among them like a ghost.

“I remember him sitting right here across from me,” Gavin said, startling her. “John, I mean. You and Katrina would be in the kitchen, chatting away, and John and I would be in here. Having a whisky.”