She nodded. ‘What was all that about his house?’

‘After the landslide, he refused to move – he was born there, it’s all he’s ever known. But the place needed a lot of work that he couldn’t afford. He’d never had a mortgage, but he had to take one out. Then he couldn’t keep up with the payments. So I took it on.’

Anna watched him. ‘That was good of you.’

He shook his head. ‘I do what I can. It’s what Cassie would have wanted. We’re all related around here, us locals, in one way or another.’

She turned to look at the pile of washing in her sink. ‘You’d better go,’ she said. ‘They’ll be waiting for you and I should get on with this lot.’

There was a moment of silence. She didn’t turn around.

‘Thank you for lunch,’ he said.

Then he was gone.

Selkie lass,

I’ve done something daft. I thought I was helping, but I only made things worse. You would have told me it was a bad idea before I’d even done it. You’re good at that, seeing what should be done and the right way to do it.

I don’t know why it bothers me so much. I don’t even know her, really.

If you were here, you could tell me how to fix it. If you were here, you would have done the right thing in the first place.

Why aren’t you here?

Eighteen

Heavy fatigue crept into Anna’s bones. She couldn’t shake the melancholy that settled on her after Robert MacKenzie had departed. She cleaned down in silence and declined Pat’s offer of a drink, unable to bear the thought of having to detail the humiliation of her latest run-in with Douglas McKean, assuming that Pat hadn’t seen it all from her window anyway. Anna racked her brains, trying to work out what she could have done differently, but drew a blank.

‘This isn’t on you,’ Cathy told her, once the kitchen was spotless and Anna was curled on the sofa with the phone to her ear. ‘Some people are simply like that. I’m glad this MacKenzie bloke put him in his place.’

‘You didn’t see his face, though,’ Anna said. ‘He looked as if his whole world had ended.’

‘Don’t feel sorry for him. He doesn’t deserve it.’

‘I don’t. Not really. But it made me realize… there are so many things here that I don’t know. Whole histories that I’ll never understand, connections that I’ll never be able to make. I thought I was settling in but… I don’t know how I’ll ever really be a part of this place.’

‘Don’t think like that,’ Cathy told her. ‘You’ve only been there a couple of months. Think of all the positives – all the friends you’ve made.’