As they rounded the bend at the top of the hill, The Dean swung into view in all its towering sandstone grandeur: porticos, arched windows, four-cornered towers and stone balustrades. Fin and Marsaili stopped to take it in. There was an odd sense of destiny in finding it here at the top of the hill, hidden behind hedges and trees, revealing itself suddenly like a glimpse into history, national and personal. The circle of fate whose first curve had begun with the departure of Marsaili’s father was completed now by her arrival.

Her voice was hushed by awe. “This was an orphanage?”

“Apparently.”

“My God. It’s a wonderful building, Fin. But no place to bring up orphaned children.”

Fin thought that his aunt’s house had been no place to bring up an orphaned child either. He said, “I read last night that originally they were fed on porridge and kale, and that the orphan girls had to make clothes for all the children to wear. I guess things would have been very different in the fifties.” He paused. “But it’s hard to picture your dad here.”

Marsaili turned to him. “Are you sure this is where he meant?”

He led her a little further up the hill, and pointed beyond The Dean, to the twin towers of another impressive building in the valley below. “Stewart’s Melville,” he said. “A private school. In the days your dad would have been here it was called Daniel Stewart’s College.”

“Danny’s place.”

Fin nodded. “A terrible irony in it, not missed by your dad. The poorest and most deprived children of his generation living cheek by jowl with the most privileged. What was it he said? The turrets at Danny’s had always been a reminder of their place in the world?”

“Yes,” Marsaili said. “At the bottom of the pile.” She turned to Fin. “I want to go in.”

They followed the drive to the portico at the entrance, where steps led up between pillars to a rust-red door. A stone stairway to their left descended to an open green space that might once have been gardens. Fin watched Marsaili’s face as they crossed a tiled vestibule into the main hallway that ran the length of the building. Impressively grand rooms led off either side of it, galleries hung with paintings, or filled with sculptures, a shop, a cafeteria. Light cascaded down at either end of it from windows in the stairwells of each wing. You could very nearly hear the distant echo of lost children.

The emotion in Marsaili’s face was almost painful to watch as she reassessed everything about herself. Who she was, where she had come from, what dreadful kind of a life her father had endured as a boy. Something he had never shared with any of them. His lonely secret.

A uniformed security guard asked if he could help them.

Fin said, “This place used to be an orphanage.”