“Seventeen. I went to the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow. Always wanted to be an actress, you see. Ever since they showed a film of Eriskay in the church hall. Not that it was a drama. It was a documentary made by some German chap in the thirties. But there was something about seeing those folk up on the big screen. Something glamorous. And, I don’t know, it gave them a kind of immortality. I wanted that.” She chuckled and moved out from behind the bar to drape herself on the settee. Dino immediately jumped up on to her knee. “I got very excited once when a teacher on the island let the kids know that he would be showing films at his house. It was just after the electricity came, and everyone squeezed into his sitting room to see them. Charged us a penny each, he did, then projected slides of his holiday in Inverness. Imagine!” She roared with laughter, and Dino raised his head and barked twice.

Fin smiled. “Did you come back for visits?”

She shook her head vigorously. “No, never. Spent years working in theatre in Glasgow and Edinburgh, and pantos around Scotland. Then I got offered my first part in TV by Robert Love at Scottish Television and never looked back. Went down to London, then. Went to a lot of castings, got a few parts, worked as a waitress to fill the gaps in between. I did all right, I suppose. But never was a great success.” Another mouthful of gin induced a moment of reflection. “Until, that is, I got offered a part in The Street. It came kind of late in life, but I was an overnight success. I don’t know why. Folk just loved my character.” She cackled. “I became what you might call a household name. And the twenty years of fame that it brought, and the marvellous earnings that went with it, have paid for all this.” She waved an arm around her empire. “A very comfortable retirement.”

Fin gazed at her thoughtfully. “What made you come back?”

She looked at him. “You’re an islander, aren’t you?”

“I am. From Lewis.”

“Then you know why. There’s something about the islands, a ghràidh, that always brings you back in the end. I’ve already got my place booked in the cemetery over the hill.”

“Were you ever married?”

Her smile carried a sadness in it. “In love once, but never married.”

Fin turned to the side windows looking back out across the hill. “So you knew the people who lived on the croft below here?”

“Aye, I did that. Old widow O’Henley it was who stayed there when I was a kid. Her and a young lassie called Ceit who was in my class at school. A homer.”

Fin frowned. “A homer? What’s that?”