I barge through the door, angry enough that it slams loud against the wall and then tries to hit me back. Everyone stops and turns, and it’s so much like the nightmares I used to have – all the widows and fatherless children standing in the street below, staring up at me with hate, the long light from Àird Èinis moving over my skin – that I step back.

‘Where are my sheep?’ And I regret, too, that my shout sounds more like a scream.

‘You’re drunk,’ Euan says, in that fucking voice of his, like he thinks he’s still king of all that he surveys.

Although he’s not wrong. I am drunk. Horribly drunk. Because I can’t lie when I drink. I can’t tell myself that shadows don’t follow me. I can’t tell myself that if only I try harder, if only I can be a better man, then my luck will change. My life will change.

I’m so drunk, in fact, that everyone looks the same: featureless blurs pretending to be people. Except for Mary and Calum. Sitting alone at a table close to the bar. Mary is half-turned away from me, but her foot is tap-tapping a tattoo against her chair leg. She’s holding on to Calum with a white-knuckled fist. Her eyes are squeezed shut.

What have they told you? I look at her hunched shoulders, always so strong, so square. How have they turned you against me?

‘The police know,’ I say to all those faces. I draw my hands into fists. ‘I told them.’

Thom Stewart comes round the bar, that perpetually smug almost-smile fixed to his face. ‘I think you need to calm down.’

Behind him, Bruce shakes his head and looks at the floor.

‘You killed my fucking sheep,’ I say, and I’m saying it to all of them, every last one of them, because they all know who. And they all know why. Because islanders stick together; villages stick together. And they always protect the wrong people. ‘But you’re not taking my family.’

I march further into the lounge, steady myself against an empty table when the floor briefly tilts. ‘Calum.’ I try to blink my eyes clear to see him better. ‘Come over here, son.’

‘Stop it!’ Mary says, and her voice is high and thin like I’ve never heard it before. ‘Just stop it. Go home, Robert.’

‘I told you not to fucking listen to them!’ Because I did. I told her so many times that I can hardly believe any of this is happening at all. ‘I’m your husband, Mary!’

But she looks away again. And her tears only make me more furious. I look at Calum, my boy, clinging to her side like a limpet. A baby. ‘Calum! Get over here. Now.’

‘You’re frightening him,’ Moira MacLeod says. Calm and soft like I’m a child needing to be talked down from a tantrum. Next to her, Charlie gets up, palms held out. Always the peacemaker.

‘You know your husband wants to fuck my wife, Moira?’ My heart is thundering inside my ears; the blood is pulsing inside my fists. ‘I mean, I know you go about pretending that the sky is always blue and the sea is always kind, but even you can’t have—’