‘Tomorrow.’

He winces. But when he finally looks up at me, he doesn’t look defeated at all. ‘Stay here tonight.’ He comes back towards me and pulls me close, his fingers digging into my skin, his eyes dark. ‘Maybe you’re right, and we both need to be on our own for a while. Maybe I need to find out who I am too.’ He leans close enough that I can see the blurred threads of red inside his eyes. Cups my face inside his hands. ‘But you and I are meant to be together, Maggie MacKay. And nothing you say, nothing we do, is going to change that.’

I don’t reply. I don’t resist when he kisses me again. Or when he leads me down the hallway towards the bedroom. Or when he pulls me down onto the bed and I feel the thump-thump of my heart once, twice, as if I’m about to be dropped from the lift-hill launch of a roller coaster. This last time belongs to me and not to anyone else. It belongs to us, to what Will and I might have been. I love you, I say to his skin, his tears, the whisper of my name in his mouth. I love you.

CHAPTER 41

I wake up early, when the light through the bedroom curtain is grey and the room still full of shadows. Will is lying on his side, facing away from me. I listen to him breathing, watch the rise and fall of his shoulders. I want to touch him so badly that I make myself get up. Get dressed. Open the bedroom door. Leave without saying goodbye. I know he’s awake, but he lets me do it. He spares me the pain of having to say no again. The pain of having to pretend I mean it.

The morning air is biting enough that I can blame it for my stinging nose, my blinding tears. And the icy Atlantic wind for having to stop, to lean heavily against the farm’s smooth white wall for too many minutes just to breathe. But when I start to waver, to think about going back, I make myself move again. To cross over the pasture to the blackhouse. I make myself go inside and pack my bag, and I don’t stop, don’t look, don’t think.

But as I open the door to go, I have to turn around. I have to pause and look back at the brightly lit pine walls, the tartan curtains and Harris tweed cushions. The driftwood mantelpiece and the Highland cow clock; the wide silver mirror and the standard lamp. The earth cellar trapdoor and its recessed steel handle. I have to take one last breath of pine and coffee and woodsmoke. I have to say goodbye. And then I have to leave.

I walk slowly back along the main road, partly because I want to commit every part of this place to memory – the overgrown Coffin Road; Loch Tana, Ben Wyvis, and the Valley of Ghosts; all those peat slabs drying in the sun like dragon scales. Everyone will be coming back soon, for the gathering and stacking. That last big party in Am Blàr Mòr. I push away the pain I feel at that. It can’t belong to me.