‘Charlie! I’m not implying that someone here—’

‘Well, who else?’ he shouts, and I realise that he’s furious. His eyes are flinty and his hands are fists. ‘This is an island, Maggie! And that night, it was an island cut off from everyone and everything. Why the hell else would you ask me which of us were in Stornoway if you didn’t think someone here killed him?’

‘I—’

‘You can’t fit a square peg into a round hole, you know, Maggie. No matter how hard you try to jam it in there.’

‘That’s not—’

‘Aye, it is. I don’t know why you want it to be true. But you do.’

And because I’m not about to tell Charlie why – about Mum: It’s coming. It’s close; about the demon and the Maudsley and all the reasons I want to start from scratch, to be someone different, someone new – I say nothing. Maybe he would understand why I need to have been right about Andrew’s murder to prove that I was right about once being Andrew himself. But I doubt he’d understand why I want that to be true – I can barely admit it to myself – the hope is still too fragile.

‘Just leave it alone,’ Charlie says as we reach the turning into the village. He looks at me with still-flinty eyes, but perhaps I can see something else behind them, something hiding. ‘You got your questions, you got your answers. Just write whatever damn story you’re going to, and then leave it alone.’

*

Before heading to the blackhouse, I stop at the phone box and call the bank. My savings have dwindled to almost nothing since Ravi left, and I spent almost the last of it on the blackhouse booking.

‘Hi. So, um, my mum just died …’ I wince in annoyance. ‘I sent you her death certificate and a Grant of Probate a few weeks ago to close out her account. I’m just wondering how that’s going? Her name was Vivienne Anderson.’

I listen to the distant clack of keyboard keys and think of London, all its noise and lights and people. ‘I’m not seeing anything on the system,’ the bank assistant tells me. ‘Let me just go check. Please hold.’

I think of Isla’s dark little living room with its peat fire and fringed lamp shades; everyone sitting around drinking tea and eating scones. Though she didn’t hold them often, Mum’s parties were legendary – long and loud. The evenings, always a slow-rising tide of people, so many people; the nights, always crowded and chaotic; the early mornings, melancholy and mellow. Portishead meant the end was in sight; I used to lie in bed, having been sent there only a few hours before, and listen to the slow beats of ‘Sour Times’ while watching the daylight crawl slowly across the ceiling and floor.

I was often the entertainment: plonked on a round leather pouffe, while Mum knelt at the opposite side of the coffee table, shuffling cards. She’d fan them out and have people pick one before turning to me with one of her big party smiles and asking me which card it was.