Tommy swallowed the rest of his wine down. Gavin topped up his glass again and something about the quick way Tommy raised it to his lips made Malcolm feel uneasy.

Some time after that, Fiona brought out cheese (Christ, Malcolm thought, they never usually had this much food) and Gavin served yet more drinks. There was a loose, hazy atmosphere in the room now. The talk turned inevitably, for a while, to farming, and then briefly to politics (a subject in which nobody was much interested except Mary, who kept herself abreast of current affairs far more eagerly than anybody else on the island. Probably came, Ross had said once, from being an incomer).

Across the table from him, Malcolm saw Tommy accepting a glass of red wine from Gavin. His nephew was sitting back in his chair now, almost lounging, more at ease—or so it seemed—than Malcolm had seen him since he arrived on the island.

“Let’s have a toast,” Ed said suddenly. He looked eagerly around the table. “A toast to Tommy’s homecoming.”

There was a general murmur of agreement, and everyone obediently raised their glasses.

“Welcome back, Tommy,” Ed said. “We should have killed the fatted calf, shouldn’t we? Instead of having lamb. It’s a crying shame you’ve been away so long.”

“Ed,” Kathy said, a warning note in her voice, as if she could anticipate where her husband might be going with this.

“Well, it is,” Ed said. “He mustn’t let what happened keep him away. He’s an island man, a Baird man, just like Malcolm. Just like John. It was madness, pure and simple. Nobody blames him, Tommy—he wasn’t himself.”

All the air seemed to go out of the room. Malcolm’s eyes met Fiona’s for a second, before she quickly glanced away; she looked horror struck.

For a few moments, Tommy didn’t speak. Malcolm began to think the moment would pass on its own and they could just change the subject—why couldn’t he think of anything to say?—but then Tommy said, “He wasn’t mad.”

“No, of course not,” Ed said. “Just at the very end.”

“I think that’s enough now, Ed,” Malcolm managed to say.

“Yes, love,” Kathy added. “Tommy doesn’t want to talk about this.”

Ed nodded and appeared ready to hold his peace. But after taking a sip of wine, he leaned towards Tommy. He seemed about to lay his hand on his arm, before thinking better of it and letting it rest between them on the table. He said, “We all knew your dad, Tommy. He wasn’t a bad man. He did a terrible thing. A terrible, terrible thing,” he went on, seeming to have got momentarily stuck on the word. “But he didn’t know what he was doing. Can’t have.”

And somehow Malcolm knew this was the worst thing Ed could have said.