‘Why? D’you have family here?’

I have a sudden and very unwelcome flashback to us running along the beach at Shoeburyness, screaming with laughter as we battled to hold on to the flying lines of a diamond rainbow kite that swooped and rose under wild gusts of wind. I remember secretly worrying that it would snatch me up and carry me away.

‘No.’ I watch as Kelly refills our glasses; force myself to wait a couple of breaths before I pick mine up again. ‘I said that I was a man called Andrew MacNeil.’

Kelly’s brow furrows.

Shadows and rock and grass, the howl of the wind. A nightmare so familiar, so unforgotten, it’s just another memory.

‘I believed that I had once been a man called Andrew MacNeil. And …’ I watch Kelly’s eyes grow wider. ‘That one day … I died – drowned – and when I woke up, I was Maggie.’

‘No. Way.’

I make myself put the whisky down. ‘And apparently, I was so insistent about being Andrew and not Maggie that I told anyone and everyone. At some point, a documentary filmmaker got involved. Offered to foot the entire bill if he could come with us – I doubt Mum could have afforded it, and Dad had already remarried and pretty much forgot he had a daughter – so … I don’t know.’ I shrug. ‘That’s what we did.’ I’m leaving out a lot, but this feels like enough for now. More than enough.

‘But why here? Why did you come here?’

‘I don’t remember this, but Mum said around the same time I also kept telling her “Kill Merry” over and over again, like she should have known what I was talking about.’

Kelly’s mouth drops open, and I can feel the heat climbing up my neck. ‘I know. Pretty creepy kid, right? And then she found me freaking out over some Scottish travel show about the Isle of Lewis and Harris on TV. She looked at a map, and there was Kilmeray.’

‘Wow.’ Kelly closes her mouth. ‘So you came here – and then what?’

‘I don’t remember much of being here either.’ I pause. Shadows and rock and grass. And sobbing the way only a child can – too hot and wild to breathe. ‘Brief flashes mostly. But Mum said it was a circus. She regretted bringing me. She regretted bringing the film crew. I was traipsed around the whole island to see if I could find my house, or where I was supposed to have died. The director even had his researchers knocking on doors, stopping people in the street.’

I think of Alec’s glacial smile. You don’t recognise her? None of you? You don’t recognise little Maggie? All those mutters and exclamations from the bar lounge.

‘Wow.’

‘He was desperate by then, I reckon. Because they hadn’t found any record of an Andrew on Kilmeray, never mind an Andrew MacNeil. I think he’d gambled on the fact that island parish records are notoriously unreliable, and just the spectacle of it, you know? Of me. Apparently I was scarily convincing.’