‘Let me take the bairn for a wee while,’ Robert said, and Anna undid the sling, smiling as she watched him hold her daughter against his chest. He sat down beside Douglas, and Anna slid in opposite. The sun was warm, the sea was calm, one of those days when it seemed impossible that the weather here was ever anything but gloriously beautiful. Behind the line of houses, the scar in the cliff was already being filled with grasses and wildflowers growing into the rivulets of soil left overlying the red rock. At this rate the slip would be invisible in a year, though the story of that night would remain part of the village’s history forever, and two of the houses below would never recover.

Anna brought her attention back to the table to find Douglas McKean looking at her through shrewd eyes. She tried for a smile.

‘Did you come to check out progress on the Fishergirl’s Luck, Dougie?’ she asked.

He nodded slowly. ‘Aye. Auld Robbie brought me o’er in t’ Cassie’s Joy.’

‘And… what do you think? Hasn’t he done a great job?’

McKean’s gaze drifted out to the ocean. ‘Ne’er seen inside t’ place afore. Nae got a thing to compare it tae.’

Anna glanced at Robert, who smiled and gave a tiny shrug. The baby laughed.

‘Heard ye called the bairn Bren,’ said Douglas McKean. He surprised Anna by reaching out one gnarled hand, waving a finger in front of her daughter until the baby caught hold of his calloused fingertip.

‘Yes,’ Anna said. ‘It… seemed kind of fitting.’

‘Aye, well, what wi’ her being made in the Fishergirl’s Luck,’ McKean agreed.

‘Dougie, that’s really not—’ Robert MacKenzie began.

‘She’s a strong one, a’right,’ the old man went on, as he and Little Bren battled for control of his finger. ‘Just like that auld harpy herself. Aye, tis a fit name for a bold wee lassie. Ye’ll have ye work cut oot w’ her. An’ mayhap she’ll end up in the bothy when I’m deid and buried. That’d be fit, too.’

Anna was taken aback by the old man’s comment. There was something she’d never even thought about. That in a few years’ time, Little Bren Campbell – or maybe, just maybe, by then she might be Little Bren MacKenzie – might end up living in the Fishergirl’s Luck. There was something about that idea that made Anna smile. What would the village look like then? Some of the faces might have changed, but she thought that Crovie itself would probably stay very similar to how it must have been back in Douglas McKean’s younger days.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You’re not wrong, Dougie. That would be very fitting.’