‘What will happen to Cora?’

‘We’ll look after her,’ Charlie says.

My phone beeps with a text, and when I see it’s from Will, I thrust it back into my pocket unread. I watch the last of the cars disembark before I turn back to Charlie again. The wind whistles around us, snatching at his thick sideburns, the wiry grey hair that pokes out from under his tweed cap.

‘Will doesn’t know,’ I say.

Charlie nods. ‘And he won’t.’ He looks at me, his eyes sharp and grey, face ruddy and lined. I remember when I first met him, thinking that there was a coldness to him, a detachment, as if he and I were different species and the gulf between us too great to even attempt to bridge. Now I see more than just the kindness in him. I see all that he’s hidden. All that he’s sacrificed. All that he’s suffered.

‘What am I going to do without you, Charlie?’

He puts down my bag, takes hold of both of my hands, squeezes them tight between his own, calloused and warm. ‘I think it’s me should be asking you that, lassie.’ He squeezes my hands tighter. ‘You’ll be right. That’s what I’ve learned during my time on this earth. You’re always as strong as you need to be. You’ll be right.’

But his eyes have turned haunted, and the grip of his fingers falters. And something like anger cuts through my numbness, my melancholy, because I realise why. What Charlie believes about himself – what he’s always believed about himself. That he’s weak.

‘You know what I’ve learned?’ I say. ‘Guilt is like a cancer. And the only way to make it right is to cut it out.’

When Charlie finally looks up again, his mouth trembles and his eyes are shining wet. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispers. ‘I am so sorry. There’s not a day has gone by that I haven’t wished I’d said no. Or told you I could see the lie, plain as day, in your eyes when you said you weren’t afraid of dying.’ His voice breaks. ‘Or that I didn’t reach out and hold on to you when you turned away from me to walk into the sea.’

I let go of his hands. Cup his face in my mine, watch his tears pool against my skin. And I think again of telling him that the truth isn’t everything. Because this I can do for Charlie. I can give him peace.

‘I forgive you.’

CHAPTER 42

I stand on the stern deck and wave, until not just Charlie but all of Stornoway is gone, swallowed inside the rocky inlets and headlands of the east coast. The wind howls around my head. The deck is empty, its rows of red plastic seats deserted. Metal rattles and bangs, waterproof covers slap and flap. My trainers slide on the deck as I lean against white-painted railings.

When I first arrived, curtains of fog had rolled across the Minch. And a storm-dusk had hidden the horizon, any hint or shape of the island that was off the bow. Now, even as that island gets further and further away, I can still see its grey cliffs and brown moorlands; the fiery golds and purples of its glens and summits. The lonely gold lights dotted along its coast like a chain of beacons. The white encircling surf. Where inside meets outside. That’s where I am now. Where I will always be. Outside.