Niall flicks away a fly and smiles a small, dry smile, thinking of how Christine would have brought their daughter up. Naming her was an issue. Christine wanted to choose something ‘special’, a name like ‘Solstice’, but Niall refused. He gave in to the name ‘Oren’, even though it was a name for a boy, meaning ash or pine. Yet, in the first few years following Christine’s disappearance, Oren morphed into Lauren.

He is never usually at the beach without the sound of Jameson’s claws on the pebbles and his panting. Niall picks up larger stones, the kind Lauren prefers with long strands of bubbly seaweed attached like hair. Were she here, she would take them home and paint them with faces and sit them to dry out on the breezeblock wall in the garden. Her pebble people. He puts one in his jacket pocket and waves away another fly. They aren’t usually so close to the shore. When he, Lauren and Billy walk Jameson down here the two children hunt for the best-looking stones they can find, two each, and line them up anonymously for him to judge. They will often stop for a takeaway on the drive home. He realizes now how hungry he is, and as he turns towards the car his foot sinks into something soft on the grassy bank. It is a mound of shaggy wool, dirty with mud and streaked with red dye across the middle. As he draws his foot back he feels his gorge rise. There is a delicate pink ear tagged with plastic and a head, bone-coloured, already rotting away where the eye should be, black with blood and flies. A sheep that has wandered too far, dead on its side by the shore.

On the short walk down the street from Lindsay’s Fish and Chips, Niall spots Catriona, the newly arrived GP whose renovated farmhouse he is working on. She is standing across the lamplit town street in a houndstooth coat and oxblood boots, unlocking her Volkswagen. She smiles at him broadly, her eyes huge and brown. He nods and smiles back, thinking he will see her soon and the oatmeal carpet in her house, waiting to be ripped up.

As he approaches his truck, he bumps into his friend Sandy Ross, wearing a Puffa and the Timberland boots that Niall covets, a Sunday paper under his arm.

‘All right?’

‘Ni-all. How’s it going?’

‘No bad, no bad. One too many bevvies last night. Think I lost a few brain cells.’ He raises the hot takeaway parcel. ‘Soon be right as rain.’

Sandy Ross says, ‘Rain, eh. You can say that again.’

‘Why do they no wrap it in newspaper any more?’

‘Oh aye. You’ll have to ask Lindsay!’

‘Never tastes as good these days.’

‘Well, you can say that again. Hie, listen. I’ve just thought you might be able to help me with something.’

‘Aye? On you go.’