‘You better ask your questions, girl. ’Cause your time’s almost up.’

My heart is still drumming away, like an echo of the torrential rain. ‘What was the secret?’

‘Stop asking questions you know the answer to.’

‘It was who killed them. Right? The secret was who killed Lorne and Robert.’ I think of the tears in Charlie’s eyes, his breath warm and sharp with whisky. I haven’t been telling you the truth, Maggie. ‘Do they all know who?’

A pause. And then the firelight throws black shadows across his face as he nods.

‘Do you know who?’

Another nod, sharp and short. I can see a muscle pulsing inside his temple. The air between us feels thin and tight.

‘You only get one more question.’

‘Who killed them?’

‘That’s two questions.’

And before I can process that, he’s moving even closer to me, and there’s a cold light in his eyes that really does look a lot like madness. I’m afraid of him in the same way that I used to be afraid of Mum. The way I’m still sometimes afraid of me. I have no idea what he’s going to do.

‘Who murdered Robert?’ The door handle digs into the small of my back, and I only barely resist the urge to reach behind me and turn it. The wind rattles the wood, it chases shudders the length of my spine. ‘That’s my question.’

‘You sure that’s what you want to know?’ He’s close enough now that I can see and smell the rabbit blood on his skin, his squeezing fists. Lightning flashes half of his face silver. ‘Because once you do, girl, no amount of sandbags will keep all that water from coming in.’

CHAPTER 32

Robert

I run west. I don’t know why. I don’t even know why I’m running. Except that it feels like the only thing left to do. The road is flooded with rainwater, flowing downhill back towards the village. The wind slaps at my skin until it burns. When I finally reach Oir na Tìr, it howls around the standing stones. I fall down at the grassy centre of the cross, and the world spins as all those tall stones pull away from me towards the dark north, south, east, and west. I take the whisky out of my pocket and drink, let it warm my throat. And I wait. For those stones to put Robert back inside me.

Because Robert isn’t weak. He isn’t this. And Mary was only ever supposed to see him, never Andrew. If I can’t stop her from leaving, from taking Calum with her, what do I have left? If I can’t survive here, where do I go? This land, these islands, are the only place I can live. But I’m always someone I don’t want to be. So what is there left for me to do?

*

When I wake up, the moorland is wet and sucking like a bog. And the sky is as heavy with approaching night as rain. My dream crouches at its edges, hides behinds rocks. Now it’s only blood and fire and the briny taste of seawater; whatever else it was is gone. But I feel strange and dislocated. As if I’m awake inside another dream.