I think of all the vándr-varði I’ve buried in that dark V between the mountains. My mother’s eyes, black and wild like the sea. Don’t you ever tell anyone what you did.

So I can put up with anger and worry, and even mistrust. Because underneath them, Mary still loves me, she still respects me. She looks at me with those lochan-calm eyes and still sees mostly the man she wants to see.

‘Daddy, I need a weewee,’ Calum says. But it isn’t true. I can tell what he needs, what he wants, what he’s feeling, often before he can. Mary says it’s uncanny, but it isn’t. I’ve trained myself to know my son completely, so that I will never once misunderstand him, or neglect him, or make him feel like he isn’t the most important person in my world. He just wants the attention that Mary’s arrival has robbed him of.

‘Let me put the big light off,’ I say, going back towards the workbench. ‘I have special lights. You’ll love them, Calum. They’re very cool.’ I haul an old blow-up mattress into the centre of the small space, turn to look at Mary as I go back for the pump. ‘I’ve got snacks, the old portable TV. An electric blanket in case we get cold.’

‘Put the lights on, Daddy!’ Calum says, wriggling about on the stool. ‘Put the ’pecial lights on!’

I go to Mary, take hold of her hands. ‘Come on, Mummy,’ I say, and I resist kissing her only because she’s still mad. She hasn’t thawed all the way out yet. ‘It’ll be fun.’

She sighs. And although there’s a small smile at the corners of her mouth, that worry, that pinch, hasn’t completely gone either. When a louder, nearer roar of thunder sounds overhead, I force myself not to wince, not to acknowledge it at all.

‘Just this once,’ she says.

‘Yeah!’ Calum shouts.

Mary goes to lift him back off the stool, and I’m too relieved to join them straightaway. I look down at my hands instead and watch my fingers until they no longer shake.

‘Robert.’ Mary’s voice is as weary as it is sharp. It reminds me of my mother again. ‘Why the hell are there three dead crows on the workbench?’

CHAPTER 23

‘Yello?’

‘Hi, hello, um … this is … this is Maggie. Maggie … MacKay.’

‘Ah.’ There’s a long pause. ‘Yes. The agency gave you my number.’

Through the phone box’s dirty window, I watch a couple coming out of Am Blàr Mòr, holding hands and laughing. ‘Do you remember me?’

There’s another pause, longer this time. ‘I do.’

But it doesn’t matter, because I already remember him. I saw his wink, his grin, his left canine more than three-quarters gold the minute I heard Yello.

‘I was sorry,’ Gordon Cameron eventually says when I don’t reply. ‘To hear about your mum.’

I’ve no idea how he knows; he wasn’t at the crematorium, that’s for sure, or he probably wouldn’t be speaking to me at all.