He beamed as he looked around at the splattered interior of the shed. No one knew what to say. Eventually he suggested we continue walking around the island, and I offered to take my father back to the house. He was tired, and becoming tetchy in the absence of drink: I could see it in the weather that crossed his face from moment to moment.

~

When we returned to the house we were presented with more tea, and small eggs on bread. I wondered if perhaps they came from seabirds. The feathers were gone from the corners of the room, and a large wood spider I’d seen in the corner of the ceiling had been banished, along with its collection of husked flies. Louisa had been caught out by our unexpected arrival, I realised, and had used our short absence to get the house up to a standard—perhaps one she thought I lived by. If only she could see my quarters.

I mashed my father’s eggs into his bread with the back of a fork and touched his hand, bumped it slightly towards his cutlery. Gideon was concentrating on something, chewing urgently so he could talk.

‘When we were walking,’ he said to Munro down the side of his teeth, ‘I saw two more houses over to the north of us. You didn’t invite us to see them.’ He gestured over his shoulder with his knife towards the rise of the island.

Munro hesitated, frowned. ‘Cannae show ye there,’ he said slowly. ‘They’s taken sick over that side. Whole family.’

The doctor was immediately interested. ‘What manner of sickness, Mister Munro?’

‘We don’t know,’ he replied. ‘Want to keep the women and bairns away from em, in case it’s catching.’

Gideon considered this a moment. ‘Well yes, that’s possible. But someone or something must have introduced the sickness to the island. Were the sufferers the only ones who came in contact with some visitors, perhaps?’

‘No sir, not to my knowledge.’

‘And why only one family? Are they unusual in any way?’

‘No. They’s normal folk, just raise the crops in season, do the birds and the odd seal…’

Gideon’s eyes were roving distractedly around the high corners of the walls.

‘Ye listening to me, doctor?’ Munro turned to the others in the room: ‘I dinnae think your man’s listening to me.’

‘What crops are they growing, Munro?’ asked the doctor in the cold, terse manner I knew to be his thinking voice.

‘Er, they do the beans in autumn, peas and rye in the winter, and some corn and vegetables in the summer…apples, pears…’

‘The rye—do they store it?’

Munro looked baffled now. ‘Course they do. We use it right through, feed for the pigs and flour for bread and…’

‘And making liquor?’

Munro did not answer. If it was possible for such hardened skin to blush, I thought I detected a reddening of his features.