“I’ll tell you what I believe, Donald. I believe that the God of the Old Testament is not the same as the God of the New. How can you reconcile the cruelty and violence practised by one with the peace and love preached by the other? You pick and choose the bits you like, and ignore the bits you don’t. That’s how. It’s why there are so many Christian factions. There are, what, five different Protestant sects on this island alone?”

Donald shook his head vigorously. “It is the weakness of men that they will always disagree, and fight over their differences, Fin. Faith is the key.”

“Faith is the crutch of the weak. You use it to paper over all the contradictions. And you fall back on it to provide easy answers to impossible questions.” Fin leaned forward. “When you hit me tonight, that came from the heart, not from your faith. It was the real you, Donald. You were following your instinct. However misguided, it came from a genuine desire to protect your daughter. And your granddaughter.”

Donald’s laugh was heavily ironic. “A real role-reversal. The believer doing the striking, the non-believer turning the other cheek. You must love that.” There was no disguising the bitterness in his voice. “It was wrong, Fin, and I shouldn’t have done it. It won’t happen again.”

“Damn right it won’t. Because next time I’ll hit you back. And let me tell you, I play dirty.”

Donald couldn’t resist a smile. He drained his mug and stared into it for several long moments as if the answers to all the questions of the universe might somehow be found at the bottom of it. “You want some more?”

“Chocolate or whisky?”

“Whisky, of course. I have another bottle.”

Fin held out his mug. “You can put as much as you like in there.”

Donald divided the rest of the bottle between them, and Fin felt the smooth malt, coloured and softened by the sherry in whose casks it had aged, slip easily down to warm his insides. “Whatever happened to us, Donald? We used to be friends. Everyone looked up to you when we were kids. You were almost heroic, a role model for the rest of us.”

“A pretty bloody awful role model, then.”

Fin shook his head. “No. You made mistakes, sure. Everyone does. But there was something different about you. You were a free spirit, Donald, raising two fingers to the world. God changed you. And not for the better.”

“Don’t start!”

“I keep hoping one day you’ll turn around with that big infectious grin of yours and shout, Only joking!”

Donald laughed. “God did change me, Fin. But it was for the better. He taught me to control my baser instincts, to be a better person than I was. To do unto others only that which I would have them do unto me.”