‘He called himself Robert Reid,’ Charlie had said on the beach. ‘When he lived here. Told me one night – I’m pretty sure only because we were both three sheets to the wind, we weren’t exactly friends – that he’d changed his name ten years before. From Andrew.’

‘Andrew what?’ And I sat looking at Charlie trying not to look at me, while that something cool and dark kept turning over and over in the pit of my belly.

‘He never said. Just Andrew.’

‘When did he die? When exactly?’

Charlie turned to face me then. ‘Middle of the spring. April, ’94. It was the Saturday after Easter.’

And for a moment, the relief was almost as sharp as the disappointment.

‘You said, We lied to you. Who is we? Who knew his name?’

‘Everyone. Just after he died, I told them what he’d told me.’

‘So why didn’t any of you say anything? I mean – Mum said you practically ran us out of town.’

Charlie sighed, shook his head. ‘It was a hard time, back when it happened. It … no one wanted it brought back up. And we knew, because of his name, because of Robert, it wouldn’t be.’ He held my gaze. ‘The dates didn’t match anyway. You were born in February. That’s what that arse of a director kept telling us anyway. Right?’

I nodded.

‘So. The dates don’t – didn’t – match. And what was in it for us even if they had? We’re not a sideshow. Something to poke and point and look down your nose at.’

‘That’s not—’

‘Aye, it was. Maybe not for you, or your mum. But for that smug bastard, and all the other smug bastards who came over here with their vans and cameras and questions, that’s exactly what it was.’

I let it go. The reproach, the disappointment that shouldn’t feel at all like relief. ‘How old was Andrew?’

‘Never knew that either. He was a sheep farmer; mid- to late twenties probably – seemed older, looked older, but I don’t think he was. His wife, Mary, was a bonnie lassie, a bit naive, younger in mind than him. She and their wee boy, Calum, had this way of looking at Robert like the sun rose and set with him.’

‘Where was he from?’

‘They came to the island in spring, ’93. She and the wee boy were Aberdonian, but his accent was pure Western Isles. Same night he said his name was Andrew, he told me he came from Ardshader.’ I watched Charlie’s Adam’s apple bob up and down twice. ‘It’s a coastal fishing village at Uig on Lewis.’

I know how common the name Andrew MacNeil is on the islands. And I know that a man changing his name from Andrew to Robert is proof of nothing at all. But it’s a beginning, and that is something. I open Safari and then the already bookmarked Scotland’s People website, bring up my old search window for the birth certificate of Andrew MacNeil. I replace my initial date-of-birth range of 1919–1976 with 1959–1974 instead, assuming Andrew’s age to be somewhere between twenty and thirty-five. When I select Uig (Lewis) from the dropdown menu of districts, there’s only one result.