‘Well, hold on and I’ll make you a spot of breakfast first, then.’

‘I’ll be fine. I’ve not got an appetite.’

‘At least take a bit of bread for when you’re up there, eh?’

He did it to appease her more than anything, and she left it there, waved him off at the window. Maybe it was having come to each other so late in life, but he and Morna always knew to allow the other one a wee bit of breathing room when it was needed. His fingers closed around the bread, wrapped in a tea towel, in the pocket of his coat, and he began breaking it into little pieces as he walked.

The night before, Malcolm had been quiet. They’d sat up staring at the fire after Morna had gone to bed, blankets over their knees like the old men their fathers never got to be. Donald had got up to change the record occasionally ­– he’d been playing old songs by their contemporaries – until Malcolm had asked for it to stop.

‘I don’t want to use my ears tonight, Donald Bain.’

And so they’d sat. Donald found himself drifting off at one point, but Malcolm’s eyes had stayed open. Eventually Donald had eased himself out of the chair, and said, gently,

‘We’ll need to be turning in, Malcolm.’

Malcolm had nodded, taken an age to raise his thin bones to standing, and shuffled out of the door without looking back.

‘Night night, then,’ Donald had said to his back, as he went about damping down the embers.

The next morning, with bread in his pocket, he kept himself out for hours, up in the foothills around Stac Pollaidh. His feet beat paths he knew without him having to direct them.

As he found himself back in the valley, it started raining. That fine kind of misty rain, the sort that soaks you through before you’ve noticed it properly. Well, he deserved much more for his cowardice. Himself out here on the moors, hiding from it. Leaving poor Morna to deal with it all. Well, wasn’t it women’s work? Nursing, wiping, anything to do with the body. Morna had raised three children. She had the patience and the nerve for the job. She wasn’t the woman to run away from a house because of a feeling, for God’s sake, and that’s who you’d want at your deathbed, wouldn’t you? Strong. Staunch. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe he’d get home and Morna and Malcolm would be sitting at the kitchen table, sharing a pot of tea.