‘Oh my God, I can’t believe I’m saying all this to an answerphone. This is stupid. I’m not crying for him. I need you to know that. I’m not crying for him.

‘Anyway, there was someone who was there for me and someone who wasn’t. And I don’t see why I have to call the person who wasn’t there my dad when you did the job much better. All right? You get me? That’s what I’m saying. That’s my thing that I’m saying now. So, I’m not going to my dad’s funeral because he’s not dead. All right? That’s what I’m saying. Right. I’m going to go now. This isn’t something I want to think about any more. OK. Bye.’

‘So, she feels that you’re her father but she won’t come to support you when you need her.’

‘Come on now, love. There was a lot more going on than that.’

‘Is that right. We maybe listened to different messages, because I heard a grown woman, almost forty, drunk and dreaming up excuses like she was a child, with no thought for someone else’s pain or grief. At a time like this, you swallow that nonsense and you come through for the people who’ve been there for you. Otherwise it’s no kind of relationship at all is what. Feels like she’s your daughter, but couldn’t make it to your wedding either, I notice.’

‘Morna. Please. Don’t do this just now. Not just now.’

‘All right. All right, Donald Bain. But it’s frustrating watching you hurt like this.’

‘Morna.’

She was only raking it up to look for a fight. Ach, they were both thinly stretched. Ishbel and the baby had just been released from hospital after a week of complications and worry and he’d watched Morna tearing herself in two, pinballing back and forth, driving long, long nights to support husband and child both. They’d had two guests booked in for B&B this week and she’d had to cancel them, find them alternate places with neighbours, after he’d nearly set fire to the kitchen when he lost track of himself cooking bacon. Just stop lass, he’d wanted to say to her more than once, just go and be with your daughter and I’ll muddle on through, and yet he’d kept quiet, needing every bit of her time he could get, desperate to be with her. Now he was heading off to the island where his family had all lived and died to bury the last remnant of an old life, and she was staying here, and they were putting even more space between them.