Chapters (39)
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Prologue
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Epilogue
- Author’s note
- Acknowledgements
- About the Author
‘What? Why? Because you mentioned a dead wife none of us had thought to tell you about?’ David asked. ‘Honestly, he’d never hold that against you. Why would he? Cassie’s been gone for five years and I can’t believe he and Young Robbie don’t talk about her all the time. I don’t think she’s a taboo subject. I hope she isn’t, anyway – that would be sad, for all of them.’
But Anna remembered the expression that had flashed through Old Robbie’s eyes as she’d asked the question. It had been gone in less than a second, but still. She wondered whether there was anything more tragic than seeing a man still so clearly in love with a dead wife. Anna’s father had never really got over her mother’s death and although the two of them had talked about her frequently and had filled the house with as many photographs of her as they could, Helen Campbell’s departure had cleaved a void in her husband’s heart too deep to be filled. The look that had been in Robert MacKenzie’s eyes at that second had shaken Anna because it was so familiar. She had seen it on her father’s face as he’d contemplated a photograph of her mother on their wedding day. That was only a week before his own passing, and her mother had been dead for almost thirty years. Some loves last no more than a season, and others reach beyond a lifetime. Each could be as powerful, Anna knew, which was one of the many inexplicable geographies of the human heart. Perhaps it was because she was still feeling her father’s death so keenly herself that she felt so awful about probing that hurt in someone else. Whatever the reason, it weighed on her, and she could not seem to forget that swift flash of pain that had crossed Robert MacKenzie’s face.
‘How did she die?’ Anna asked, looking out towards the turbulent, wind-churned waves far below them. They had left the village behind now, and all Anna could see was wild, rocky coastline. ‘She didn’t drown, did she?’
‘Cassie? Oh no, it was breast cancer. Her funeral was a sight to see. She was a primary school teacher over in Macduff and the whole school turned out, as well as plenty of former pupils and just about every resident from here to Fochabers. Cassie MacKenzie was very much loved.’
Anna thought again about the look she’d seen in her widower’s eye, and didn’t doubt it for a moment.