On the wall in front of him there was a photograph he hadn’t noticed before. Two women walking down a dirt track. It was taken on Whalsay but before any of the roads had been made up. On their backs they had the rush baskets or kishies that were used for carrying peat and they were so full that he could see the peat piled behind their shoulders. They were wearing old-fashioned bonnets and skirts below their knees, heavy boots. And as they walked they were knitting; the wool was held in apron pockets, their elbows were close to their bodies. They smiled towards the camera, poised for a moment, but you could tell the needles would begin clacking again as soon as the shot was over. Sandy wondered if they were knitting just for the fun of it, or because raising peat was boring, or because they were so busy that this was the only time there was in the day to provide clothes for their children. Or if they did it to make money. It was the sort of thing his mother might do, Sandy thought. Not exactly like the women in the old photo, but working at several things at once, because Evelyn liked to be active and because she needed to hold the family together.

He lay for quite a long time staring at the photograph. He didn’t think either of the women was Mima. She’d been much better-looking than they were and she’d never been a knitter. ‘I don’t have the patience for it,’ she’d said when he’d asked as a child why she didn’t knit like the other grandmothers. Then he thought about his father who’d gone to school in dirty clothes because Mima didn’t have the patience for washing either. Sandy didn’t think now he’d have preferred Mima as his mother; at least Evelyn had always fed them well and kept them clean.

Michael and his family were going south on the afternoon plane. Evelyn and Joseph were travelling down to the airport in Sumburgh to see them off. Sandy thought that might give him a chance to go into Utra and have a look round the house without his parents asking questions. His uneasiness about what had been going on there had grown in the last few days. Michael’s words about their parents’ future had brought it into sharper focus. He thought that was what had made his father so tense too – a vague anxiety that things weren’t quite right.