‘Och, they’d be fine. They’d be fine, but it’d only be because I’m Gogsy’s girl. They’d say, “Oh, I’ll get this, sweetheart, you just smile,” at every door. They’d talk over me if I tried to speak, and they’d maybe pat my bum on the way down a garden path. Just for fun. I know these boys. Every time I go to a meeting I’m supposed to take the notes, and should one of them need a cuppa he flags me down like I’m a waitress. Naw, I’m good on my own, pal.’

She’d picked that up from Gogsy, he’d noticed, the harder edges of the local accent swirling into the fluting hybrid she spoke with. He almost believed her, too, until she chapped on Chae Macfarlane’s door, and the Grand Master of the local chapter of the Masons, imperious in socks and moustache, told her that Gogsy was a charlatan, she was a daft wee lassie, and he’d be voting, as he always did, for Mrs Thatcher’s Conservative candidate.

‘For a party that has completely decimated your local community and continues to hold you in contempt? Really? There are boys hanging around the streets here who will never have another chance at work now that car plant’s gone! Your precious Thatcher has used this country, your people, as a testing ground for some of the harshest policies in living memory – your neighbours will be thrown in jail through no fault of their own! She has no love for you, you know!’

It wasn’t that her points were wrong, but she had utterly failed to read her audience. As her voice grew shriller his granite slab of a face closed down completely, until he simply shut the door on them.

Still, almost everyone else met them with smiles. Clio had the right name on her rosette, and most of the community had already made up their minds. She wore a black dress, her one pair of high heels and a very bright lipstick at the count, threw her arms around Gogsy who had only begun to relax in his suit over the last couple of days, and Neil’s photographer pal rushed forward to get a picture of them, handsome and young and victorious.

DONALD

Achiltibuie, 24 January 2018

It was Morna told him. She came in the kitchen door with the washing basket on her hip, the newspaper rolled in beside the clean sheets, smell of cold on her cheeks. What had he been doing? Ach, it didn’t matter.

‘Donald,’ she’d said, and just with the tone of her voice he’d known something was wrong. Soft voice, lower note, pulling out the second syllable. ‘Donald, love.’