And I looked away from the birds and the sea, the men on the beach and the women on the bluffs – and out towards the high dark summit of Àird Èinis where the light should have been burning bright. The moon pushed from behind a cloud to bathe the headland in cool silver, and that was when I finally dropped to my knees in the wet sand. When I finally lost the shine of that strange sweet awe, and remembered what it felt like to be scared. To be sick with a fear so big, so full of sorrow and horror, that nothing else could survive alongside it.

‘The Coastguard never came,’ I say, glad that my voice betrays nothing. ‘There were too many boats in trouble off the western coast that night, and no helicopter could’ve taken off in those winds.’

‘The Acair.’ Charlie’s hands are tight fists on the tabletop. ‘The Marcan-sìne and the Darach.’

That’s the problem with fishermen. They never forget. They know every boat, every tragedy, every dead sailor.

Charlie looks at me, blinks shining eyes. ‘You’re from Àrd Shiadair,’ he says, still low like he’s whispering.

It’s not a question, so I don’t answer. Àrd Shiadair. Am baile gun fhir, the village without men. And for that whole day – from that morning at my window to that moment before I dropped to my knees on the beach – I’d wished for it. I’d longed for it. Like a Valkyrie choosing who lives and dies in battle, I’d made it happen. ‘Your father was Douglas,’ Charlie says. His jaw is clenched.

‘Dougie MacNeil.’

That isn’t a question either. Yet it doesn’t feel like a mistake – my terrible secret almost laid bare to someone who’s still a stranger to me. Someone I don’t trust. Even worse, I want to tell him it all. I’m drunk, but I’ve been drunk before. And never has it been like this – a terrible freedom that feels too good to stop.

‘You’re Andrew MacNeil.’

Because Andrew was a fisherman’s name. Because I’d been born when my father was at sea and the tide was rising.

‘Why did you change your name to Robert?’

‘Because I did something terrible. I didn’t want to be Andrew MacNeil any more.’

I’m no longer shaking. My hands are steady. But my heart batters against my ribs and pulses inside my throat. I’ve never told anyone this. I’ve never come close to telling anyone. Charlie says nothing. Only looks at me steadily, carefully, no trace at all of his easy smile. I look at the dark smoke inside those peat embers instead.

‘They used to follow me.’ I swallow, and my throat is dry. But I don’t reach for more whisky. ‘I’d hear them. Watching, following. Muttering. Saying my name.’

‘Who?’

Impatience sharpens my shame. ‘Them. The bòcain. Sometimes only my father. But, when there was a storm, all of them. All eighteen of them. I’d see their arms in the waves. I’d hear their shouts in the sky. Sometimes I’d lie in bed, watching the light from Àird Èinis as it moved over my bedroom walls, and I’d feel them. Hiding in the dark spaces amid the white.’