There had been no sign of Donald as Catriona served him a plate of bacon, egg, sausage and fried bread at the kitchen table. She had gone to bed long before they had finished with the whisky, and made no comment about the amount consumed. Neither Fin nor she had felt much like engaging in conversation. That she disapproved of him, and whatever had happened the night before, was evidenced by her silence.

The rain had stopped some time during the night, and already soft southern winds had dried the grasses, another change in the weather. The sun had rediscovered its warmth, and fought to take the edge off the wind.

Fin needed the air to clear a head still fuzzy and delicate from the words and whisky that he and Donald had spilled and consumed between them. He had not been back to his tent yet, dreading to think what state it might now be in, having left it open to the elements all night. There was a chance it might be gone altogether, and he wasn’t sure that he was ready yet to face that possibility.

Whether drawn by his subconscious, or by pure chance, he found himself on the track leading to Crobost Cemetery, where headstones stood out on the rise of the hill like the spines of a porcupine. All the Macleods and Macdonalds and Macritchies, the Morrisons and Macraes, who had lived and died in this narrow neck of the world were buried here. Hard like rock, and carved out from the mass of humanity by the wind and the sea and the rain. Among them his own parents. He wished, now, he had brought Robbie back to put him in the ground here with his ancestors. But Mona would never have allowed it.

He stopped at the gate. It was here that Artair had told him all those years before that he and Marsaili were married. A part of him had died that day with the loss, finally, of the only woman he had ever loved. The woman he had driven from his life, by thoughtlessness and cruelty. A self-inflicted loss.

He thought about her now. Saw her in his mind’s eye. Skin flushed by the wind, hair unravelling behind her. Pictured those cornflower-blue eyes piercing through all his protective armour, disarming him with her wit, breaking his heart with her smile. And he wondered if there was any way back. Or was it true what he had told Fionnlagh? That they hadn’t been able to make it work all those years before, why would it be any different now? The pessimist in him knew that it probably was. And being consumed by pessimism, it was only the tiniest part of him that thought they had any chance at all. Was that why he had come back? In pursuit of that smallest of chances?

He didn’t open the gate. He had revisited the past too often, and found only pain.