For the first few years of Cliodhna’s life, he had been there almost all the time. He and Malcolm travelled together, sometimes with Fraser, sometimes with another couple of boys, always with what Malcolm referred to proudly as his ‘womenfolk’. Musicians and instruments on blankets in the back of the rusty van Malcolm had bought for five bob and fixed up himself; Eileen holding the baby in the front. The years she was one, two, three and four they lived from April through to September in a run-down cottage at the edge of a farm on Skye. They played ceilidh sets every night in the big hotel packed with tourists, Malcolm a strutting rooster as he called the dances, affecting a Yankee twang and a bootlace tie pressed on him by a drunk old Texan over a malt. The baby chased chickens about in the mud, laughing at the splatch of her bare feet; they bathed her in the sink. Malcolm learned Gaelic songs from the old boys round the way and taught them to Cliodhna. Eileen walked out to the bed-and-breakfast a mile away to help them with the cleaning, and all of their faces freckled and toughened, being outside and out of the town again. In the daytime, once they’d woken, Malcolm would strap the baby to his chest in a sheet, or sling her, giggling, onto his shoulders, and they’d walk together across farmland, two men and a tiny girl, till they got to the sea, breathed it in, the salt air scouring their hangovers away. Malcolm searched the horizon for America, tried to orientate himself towards it. ‘Just out there, Cliodhna. Just out there. That’s where we’ll go, my girl.’ Then he’d set her down on the beach, strip all of his clothes off and run into the water, a fierce hooting coming off him as the cold hit.

Donald watched him from a distance, the red hair of his chin and crotch bouncing in time, his cock spinning, his pale skinny arse tensing as the waves reached it. His friend was beautiful, a tiny naked offering to the sky god, the sea god, the ancient shrugging mountains watching but not caring. The baby ate handfuls of wet sand, smeared it on her face, vomited down her jumper.

Donald loved Cliodhna’s teeth, when they came in. He loved it when she bared them, like a little savage, in her enjoyment of a wrestling match or when he made the fiddle screech and wail like a train, turned wild runaway tunes for her. He loved the elbows and knees of her, always moving if she could, that orange scribble of tight curls still twitching when she was compelled to be still. He loved her furies and rages against the unfairness of the world, because he couldn’t think of any adults with that much fire in them.