Anna sighed. ‘You didn’t offend me. It was only… I’ve had quite a few years of not being able to do things the way I would choose to for myself.’

He nodded. ‘I get that, and I’m sorry.’

‘And I probably owe you an apology for yesterday,’ Anna added. ‘I know you were trying to help.’

‘There’s nothing to apologize for,’ he told her. ‘Unless, that is, you let what happened with Dougie stop you from trying again. That really would be something to be sorry for.’

Anna looked away, out towards the open ocean before them. The boat picked up speed as they cleared the bay and the coast stretched out before them, cliff and shore and wave undulating together in perfect curves of earth and water.

‘Dolphins ahoy!’ Fraser shouted from the shelter of the boat’s protected helm. ‘We’ve found them, boys! We’ve found them!’

The two children whooped and ran forward, leaning over the rail.

‘I’ll think about it,’ she told him. ‘Let’s concentrate on the dolphins for a while.’

Nineteen

The pod hopped and skipped ahead of the boat, sleek shapes leaping out of the ocean so cleanly that they barely even seemed to trail water while airborne. Anna and Emma leaned against the rail beside the two boys, who were trying to number the pod. It was a difficult proposition with the creatures’ exuberant, here-one-second-gone-the-next movements. Jamie and Robbie pointed and shouted, ducked and whooped, shimmering with excitement and purpose.

Anna caught Emma’s eye and smiled. ‘Do you think they know we’re here?’

‘The boys, or the dolphins?’ Emma asked dryly. The two children did seem to be growing more excited by the second.

Anna laughed, pointing at a singing curve as it leapt through a wave and splashed smoothly down again, disappearing from view. ‘That’s so amazing to see. Why do they even do that?’

Emma shook her head. ‘For my money they do it because they can. Wouldn’t you, if you could?’

‘I absolutely would.’

The two women talked as the day wore on, exchanging histories and becoming acquainted. Emma, as Fraser had already said, commuted to Inverness each day, where she managed a branch of one of the major banks.

‘It’s maybe not what I planned to be doing all my life,’ she confessed, ‘but it’s made us financially stable, and that’s nothing to be sniffed at these days. It’s why I admire you so much, Anna, giving everything up to change your life completely to start over.’

‘Well, it was a bit different for me. I don’t have a family to support.’

‘True,’ Emma agreed, ‘but it’s still such a big thing to do. How are you finding it so far?’ she asked, and then laughed at Anna’s immediate grimace. ‘That good, eh?’