Charlie takes back the hip flask, screws it shut. ‘Eilean is “island”. Beag is “wee”.’

‘And the Gaelic name for Kilmeray – Cill Mer—’

‘Cill Maraigh.’

‘What does that mean?’ I’m acutely aware – and doubtless so is Charlie – that I’m making a painfully clumsy job out of trying to ingratiate myself with at least one of the locals. But, for me, perseverance is often starting down a path and realising that it’s only going to be more painful to have to turn back.

‘Church of Saint Maraigh.’ He nods towards a long, narrow headland far distant in the west and still shrouded in dark clouds. ‘There’s ruins of a thirteenth-century medieval church up on Roeness. ’Course it’s also derived from Old Norse. Most place-names around here are. Nearly every MacLeod, MacNeil, MacDonald, MacKenzie, or Morrison born on these islands has Scandinavian blood.’

I start a little at the mention of MacNeil, but I make myself pause, try not to sound too suddenly eager. ‘So you’ve always lived here, then? On Kilmeray?’

‘Aye.’ He gives me a very narrow-eyed look before turning away.

I smile, frustrated that he didn’t take the bait, and unsure how to steer the conversation in the direction I need it to go.

‘So,’ Charlie says, watching Bonny, now sitting on the sand, tongue lolling as she looks longingly out at the waves. ‘This story you’re here to write. Why are you writing it?’

And even though this is exactly what I wanted, I suddenly feel nervous. Because I’m a bad liar. I speak before I think. And somehow, I hadn’t realised that this would be so hard. Not just telling the lies, but remembering them, believing them.

‘My boss likes personal accounts,’ I say. ‘Like that American novelist who realised his gran had been poisoning his family her whole life, or the neuroscientist who studied the brain scans of psychopaths and discovered that he was one too.’

I don’t have a job any more. I quit the magazine the day I left the Maudsley and booked my flight to Glasgow. I’d lost my mum. My fiancé. Myself. Losing my job barely registered at all. My cover story isn’t just a cover story, it’s a means to an end. A way to speak to people who were here. To have them speak to me. To find out the truth. About Andrew MacNeil. About me. And I’m still a writer; maybe that’s the only part of me I’ve managed to hold on to.

I risk a sidelong look at Charlie. ‘But I think he’s going to be pretty disappointed. I don’t know that I’m going to be writing anything at all.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘There’s nothing to find out, is there? I did a lot of research before I came here, and all of it matched what the film director found in ’99 – or didn’t. Andrew MacNeil’s a pretty common name in the Hebrides. But no Andrew MacNeil has ever been registered on Kilmeray: birth, marriage, death. No Andrew MacNeil has ever registered a croft, peat poll, or fishing boat here either.’