‘Hello. I’m Gillian MacKenzie,’ the woman behind the bar says. Her face is tanned and freckled, her smile warm, her accent local, but with the faint traces, perhaps, of something else. She tucks long dark-blonde hair streaked with silver behind her ears before reaching out a hand to shake mine. ‘And you must be Maggie.’

‘How—’

‘Oh, everyone knows about you.’ A barman turns from the optics at the other end of the bar. Until I see his easy smile, I take him literally, and my heart briefly gallops. Just like it did when Jaz asked me if I’d ever been to the islands before and I left too long a pause before shaking my head.

The barman sets two whiskies down in front of the fishermen before turning back to me. He’s short and lean, his eyes a startling dark brown. ‘You’re Kelly’s first booking. She danced about this place like the Road Runner on speed when she got your email.’

‘My husband, Bruce,’ Gillian says. ‘Ignore him. Anyway, what can I get you? First one’s on the house. We’re doing strawberry daiquiris and pink G and Ts in honour of Valentine’s Day.’ She pauses for a moment, and then leans towards me. ‘Are you okay?’

No, I abruptly want to say. My mum just died. It’s like a very specific and sudden form of Tourette’s. I lasted less than ten minutes on that Stansted plane before saying it to the poor woman sitting next to me, soaking up her sympathy for the whole journey to Glasgow. Where presumably she imagined my mum had just died. Three months ago isn’t just, even if it feels like it is. And no matter how much I’d like it to be true, Mum not being here any more isn’t the cause for that ballast in my stomach, the nightmares I can’t stop having, all those maybe-it’ll-be-all-rights. It’s not the reason why, less than two weeks after being discharged from the Maudsley, I’ve travelled seven hundred miles to this place – this village – in the middle of nowhere. Even if it’s easier to pretend that it is.

‘Sorry. I’m just tired,’ I say. And try to smile. ‘Could I have a white wine, please? Whatever you have. And thank you.’

I pretend to be interested in the photos crowding the red wall next to the bar as Gillian takes a bottle of pinot grigio out of a fridge and starts pouring. Some photos are framed, some laminated; colour, sepia, and black-and-white landscapes of sea and cliff and beach; portraits of men and women and children. Above them is a mounted piece of varnished driftwood carved with black-painted words, The sheep will spend its life in fear of the wolf, and then be eaten by the shepherd.

‘A cheery sentiment,’ Gillian smiles, handing me the wine. ‘But it’s been here longer than I have; bit like most of those pictures. Lot of the folk in them are here tonight.’

‘Maggie!’

I recognize Kelly’s gap-toothed smile and sleek brown bob from her online photo. She rounds the bar, throws her arms around my shoulders and squeezes hard.