Now, I look around this brightly lit room, breathe its air, cool and still and smelling of pine and coffee and woodsmoke. I get up and run my fingers along the wooden surface of the mantelpiece, looking at my reflection in the wide silver mirror above it. Did Robert once stand in this spot? Did he once look into this mirror? Nothing about the blackhouse feels familiar at all, but still, my heart beats faster.

I remember the trapdoor near the kitchen – Kelly’s earth cellar – and cross the room to hunker down next to it. The door is big and cut into the pine floor, but it’s only when I pull up on its recessed steel handle that I see the small key-shaped hole below it. Locked.

I get up and go into the small box room, but it’s literally filled with only boxes, stacked high and taped shut. I pull back the heavy tartan curtain of its only window instead. It’s dark outside, even though it’s still early. The rain has persisted all afternoon, the wind rattling against the front door and whistling down the steel flue pipe. There’s only one light in the gloom, and it comes from the farm. A faint orange glow, rectangular rather than square. And around it, the darker silhouette of stone against the sky. I peer into the darkness and try to imagine Andrew. What he looked like. What he sounded like. A complicated man with a bad past which had followed him like a shadow that didn’t need the sun. And then the light winks out.

When someone knocks loudly at the front door behind me, I stagger back from the window, almost taking the curtain with me. I allow myself a few ridiculous seconds to regain my breath and slow my heartbeat. I creep back into the mudroom and peer through the tiny inset window of the door before unlocking it. And am greeted by an icy gust of wind and Kelly’s toothy grin.

She looks me up and down, and grins wider. ‘Look, Maggie. I know I said it was slim pickings, but I don’t think flannel pyjamas are going to cut it even in Am Blàr Mòr.’

*

Kelly’s flat is tiny. Little more than a living area, bedroom, bathroom, and a laminate-floored hallway that wouldn’t fit two people side by side.

When I follow her into the main room, Jaz is sitting cross-legged on a rug next to an overturned crate of Lego and a little boy with a shock of blond hair.

‘Hey, Kelly,’ Jaz says before giving me a not exactly unfriendly glance, but certainly one that’s miles away from yesterday’s generous grin. ‘Maggie.’

‘Hi,’ I say.

‘And this wee man,’ Kelly says, ‘is Fraser.’

‘Hi, Fraser,’ I say, when he gives me a bashful smile. ‘It’s very nice to meet you.’

Jaz stands up, goes towards the door. ‘When d’you want me back?’

‘Maybe a couple of hours, if that’s okay?’ Kelly says, and Jaz nods, closes the door behind him.