When they all get up, I let out a breath, gasping quickly for another. I look at those bobbing frantic lights, those sodden and defeated figures on the shore. The skiff is gone. Even if Jimmy does manage to get a boat around Eilean Beag and all those headlands, it’ll take too long. Above me, the rain becomes sleet, and then hailstones, hard and relentless. Those mountainous waves pound and choke. I’ve become so heavy, I can’t hold on to the rock. I can’t tread enough water to stay afloat. I’ve swallowed too much of the sea; my belly feels hard and full, and still somehow empty. My exhaustion is like nothing I’ve ever felt before – leaden and hopeless, like a starless black sky.

And then I look back at the beach. All the torches have gone, except for one lone gold circle that shines out across the furious waves. A sob rises up in my throat: afraid and helpless like a child’s. For a terrible moment, I can’t see anything but that solitary light – my vision is too blurred and the dusk has too many shadows – and then I can. I can see them. Wading into the sea, into the wild surf. A long thin line of people holding hands. Charlie at the front, waving, shouting at me to hold on a little longer as they head towards my rock. Towards me.

And then I understand. This is what I wanted. Not to suffer atonement for the terrible things that I’ve done. Not to suffer a fate that should have always been mine. Not to be seen, or to be sacrificed. I’ve never understood anything, or anyone, at all – least of all myself. I watch that line waver and stretch, but it never breaks. Even as the wind howls and the sea roars and the sky screams, it keeps reaching for me. They want to save me. They know me. They see me. And they still want to save me.

I think of Mary. All that burning heat beneath cool and calm. Slow and steady and strong. I think of Calum, his round little face and eager smiles. My wee boy. Who I have loved more than life, more than anyone else I have ever known. We none of us get the father we deserve.

Instead, I’ll become just another soul lost to the sea. One who battled so long and so hard to come back again. Because ghosts are just unspoken truths. And the weight of my fear will no longer be a millstone around my neck, but an anchor. A memory of home.

The end is never the end.

I let go of the rock. Look up into the starless sky. And I finally let the sea have me.

CHAPTER 37

‘The Fisherman.’

I think of that tall stern memorial above Long Stride, looking out at the sea. ‘It’s for Robert.’

Charlie wipes his eyes. ‘It’s what he wanted it to say. So it’s what it says.’