And I’d look at those infrared contact lenses back inside their case on the bedside table. I’d think of those marked cards in the coffee table drawer. But Mummy, it wasn’t true.

Yes, it was, sweetie. Of course it was. That same light. That same smile. But sometimes even the most special of us need a little help.

*

When I get back to Ardcraig, the pasture is empty. Perhaps Will’s taken the sheep out west towards the beach. The sun is high, the wind for once low. I can hear someone hammering a fence post with a wooden mallet: its echo is the only sound apart from the birds and the waves. Spring is truly here. Ben Wyvis has lost its burnt orange in favour of bright green, and as far as I can see, the machair is covered in a riot of colour: purples and whites and pinks and yellows. The island is beautiful, bright and alive in a transformation that I could never have imagined back in those first dark and oppressive weeks in February. The metaphor isn’t lost on me; when Will took me for my first blood test in Stornoway last week, the GP said I was ‘positively blooming’, as if we’d already met, as if he could see what weight was being lifted from my shoulders.

I could wait for Will at the farm, but I go to the blackhouse instead. I stand inside its main room, the sunlight turning the walls pale gold, and I think about Mum. I think about me. I think about Robert. And just as I glance at that trapdoor near the kitchen, I remember those two rusty keys inside the bedroom table drawer.

I open the drawer with some trepidation, but there are no new dead birds. The keys feel cool against my palm as I walk across the room and hunker down next to the trapdoor. The first key fits perfectly, and needs only a few hard rattles to turn and click open the cylinder lock.

I hesitate for just a moment before I pull up on its recessed steel handle. Maybe on a day like any other, I wouldn’t look. I wouldn’t dare. But today isn’t a day like any other. Today is the 9th of April, the day that Lorne and Robert died. And today is also the day I’ve finally accepted that Mum lied. Her tricks, her marked cards, all those years of cheating, and all those people – just like Gordon Cameron – always so ready to believe in that fantasy, in any fantasy. Of course he would believe Mum. I believed her. I don’t remember saying Kill Merry, because I never said it. I don’t remember why we came here, because I wasn’t the one who wanted to. All of my life, I’ve danced to her tune one way or another, even when I knew it was a lie – when I could see it with my own eyes. I never forgot that I knew, I just pretended to.