It seemed to Sandy that the funeral service in the kirk passed in no time, like a kind of dream. The place was full of people. The tradition was that it was mostly men who came to a Shetland funeral and when a woman had passed away there were fewer people in the congregation, but today the kirk was packed and there were as many women as men. He wasn’t sure why that was – more because they didn’t want to miss out on the drama, he thought, than that they’d miss her. She’d always had more male friends than women. Sandy remembered sitting there in the front row and thinking that Mima would have liked the singing. She’d always been one for a great tune. Joseph hadn’t said anything throughout the service, but Sandy could hear his mother’s voice speaking the Lord’s Prayer and in the hymns. She had a high, piping voice that could keep a tune but that still wasn’t very pretty. Sandy thought he’d like to marry a woman with a pretty voice.

Then they were outside in the sunshine watching the coffin being lowered into the ground. There was a crowd of gulls fishing from the point below the kirk and he wondered if that meant there was a shoal of mackerel there; that led him to think about Mima frying fresh mackerel on the Rayburn at Setter when he was a boy. She’d roll it in oatmeal and throw it in the pan. When he came to again the service was over and it was just him and his father and brother standing by the grave. His mother had gone back to the house to prepare the tea and the people left behind were hanging around, wanting to give their condolences, but not liking to intrude either. The breeze blew at the women’s skirts and messed up their hair.