At five, Nikolas woke to begin the preparations for sun salutation. Xanthe berated him from the bed.

‘Don’t ever do that to me again, Niko. Don’t take it upon yourself to decide that I need to engage with someone, to have a friendship. Ask me things. You don’t get to take decisions for me. If I want not to talk to someone from my past, you respect that and let me be, OK.’

That wimpy shrug. She threw a sandal from the floor across the room and it hit the door as he closed it.

She noticed Clio didn’t make it to morning asanas. The rest of the guests were waiting there in the driveway, dangling their feet over the wall down to the sea, catching a last tiny bit of sun before the drive to the ferry, and the pitch began to get restless, anxious, as time ticked on. Nikolas went off to bang on Clio’s door, and she stumbled down the stairs ten minutes later, avoiding all eyes. That cigarette, she thought, as the fat behind shoved itself into the van. That cigarette was coming soon.

DONALD

1974–84

Donald had shoved his friend’s hungover limbs into the van and settled in for the drive to Ayrshire, Malcolm snoring in the passenger seat. Eileen’s village, with its grey bricks and bluster, not a colour about the place, did not welcome their arrival. The primary school was poured concrete, all steep drops and hard corners for soft little bodies to catch themselves. They sat outside it, perched on the bonnet of the van, looking uncomfortably suspicious – but these were Eileen’s instructions, delivered down the phone to Donald: ‘You’ll need to pick her up from the school yourselves, and drop her to the house afterwards. I’m not for seeing him.’

‘She surely doesn’t mean us to get arrested?’ Donald muttered, as the flood of parents filed past, eyeing the two strangers and their van. Malcolm merely laughed again, from behind a pair of dark glasses. After twenty minutes and no sign of her, Donald pushed him into the building. They were met halfway across the playground by a hawk of a woman, the sort Donald could imagine thumping out the hymns on the piano; clearly they had been watched.

‘Can I help you.’ Not a question.

‘Malcolm,’ Donald muttered. Malcolm woke up, turned on the lights.

‘Hello, Mrs—? McGrouther? Mrs McGrouther. I’m here to collect my daughter, Cliodhna. She’s in the first –’ he stopped and checked with Donald, who rolled his eyes ‘– the second class. Her mother told us to pick her up from school. It’s her birthday treat, you see.’

The woman was too close, could probably smell yesterday’s whisky leaching out of him.

‘We have no pupils with that name here. I suggest you leave the premises immediately.’