‘He was here on the opening night yesterday,’ Hekla said, handing us two glasses of champagne. ‘So Dylan is ancient history now?’ she asked, looking Lyngar up and down.

‘There was never anything to make any history,’ I said, quickly sipping some champagne. I grimaced. It tasted strange.

‘Didn’t look like that to me,’ Hekla said, watching as I put the glass of champagne down. Hekla turned to Lyngar and waved her hand. ‘Go explore. Gwyneth and I need to talk.’

‘You don’t have to go!’ I said to him, not really wanting to talk about Dylan. I was trying to put him behind me.

‘No, it’s fine, really,’ Lyngar said, not reading the signals in my eyes. ‘I’d like to look at this art anyway. Who knows, maybe I will buy a piece?’

‘I insist you do!’ Hekla said. When he walked off, Hekla took my arm, dipping her head close to mine. ‘Come now, woman to woman. What happened with Dylan? He disappeared not long after you left, took himself back to Scotland and that godforsaken family business. After everything we discussed, I am so disappointed in him.’

I shuffled awkwardly.

‘So what happened with the two of you?’ Hekla asked.

‘It was no big deal,’ I replied. ‘I just don’t think he wanted to be tied down. And anyway, we barely knew each other.’

‘Well, maybe it’s for the best,’ she said, waving at someone as they passed. ‘His family are a mess. You wouldn’t want to get involved.’

I frowned. Hadn’t the man who owned the farmhouse across from the loch said the same? A mess of a family, he’d said.

‘How long have you known the McCluskys?’ I asked.

‘I’ve known Mairi and Oscar twenty years,’ Hekla replied. ‘Asher and I met them at a design conference in Geneva many years before we married. We were even going to spend some of our honeymoon with them when we toured the UK. But they had to cancel. A family tragedy, apparently.’

‘Tragedy?’

She nodded. ‘I never did find out what happened. I didn’t want to pry.’

‘When was this?’

‘Asher and I celebrated our ten-year anniversary last year.’

I thought about it. That would have been eleven years ago. Dylan had said Heather had witnessed something awful as a ten-year-old. She must be around twenty now so that would put it in the same time period. Then something else occurred to me: Gavin had said the two families had stopped talking to each other ten years ago.

‘Why do you say they’re messed up?’ I asked Hekla. ‘Just because they experienced a family tragedy doesn’t make them a mess.’