Sandy knew his mother had hoped he’d take up with one of the ‘nice wee girls’. She thought he should settle down and give her grandchildren. Michael, after all, had obliged by marrying an Edinburgh lawyer and producing a daughter who was already attending private nursery. But that wasn’t like having a grandchild close at hand to meddle with. Jackie scored now on that too. Sandy had liked the students well enough. Not Hattie so much, who was intense and far too clever for him, but Sophie, who was more laid-back. She liked a few beers and a bit of a laugh, she was kind of flirty. Posh, but friendly all the same. The boys teased him because he always had a different woman on the go, but he was starting to think it was time for him to settle down. It was tiring chasing after the lasses and there were more single men in Shetland than there were women. But would he really want to be like Ronald, married to a woman who nagged and bossed? It would be like living at home again.

‘The dig is so exciting!’ Evelyn was distracted from Mima’s death by her passion of the moment. ‘Hattie thinks there’s a merchant’s house there. It was built at the time when the Hanseatic League was starting to collapse and folk were told they couldn’t trade through Bergen any more. I found a skull, you know. Part of a skull. Hattie thinks it might belong to the merchant who built the house. It’s been sent away for carbon dating. They’ve been exploring the same trench and Sophie found more bone. Part of a rib and maybe the pelvis. Imagine what a tourist attraction it would be, if we excavate the site properly. I’d like to build a house, just as it would have been. We could run workshops, family days. We have to look to the future if we’re going to provide work for our young people.’

Sandy stifled a yawn, thought again that Evelyn had a lot in common with Anna. He couldn’t get worked up about the island’s future. He’d left Whalsay for Lerwick as soon as he could escape from his mother and felt more at home in town now. ‘That bacon’s not burning, is it, Mother?’

Evelyn shook the pan, scowled at Sandy for questioning her ability to fry a couple of rashers.

‘When you visited Setter, was Mima in the house, or outside with the women?’ Perez asked.