Chapters (43)
- Pronunciation
- Prologue
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
- Forty
- Acknowledgments
They walked in silence up Tipperlinn Road, stone villas brooding privately behind high walls and tall trees, past the old coach-house at Stable Lane to where the cobbled Albert Terrace ran off up the hill to their right in a profusion of green.
Eventually, Marsaili could no longer contain herself. “What do you think really happened on the Dean Bridge that night?”
Fin shook his head. “Impossible to know. Everyone who was there is dead. Except for your father. And maybe Ceit. Though we have no idea whether she’s still alive or not.”
“At least we know now who my father is. Or was.”
Fin looked at her. “I wish you hadn’t told him your dad’s name.”
The blood drained from her face immediately. “Why?”
He sighed deeply. “I don’t know, Marsaili. I just wish you hadn’t.”
Thirty-four
Thirty-four
Fin looked down out of the late afternoon at the ragged fingers of rock that reached out into the Minch, water breaking white all around them. Peat bog stretched away into the island’s interior, scored and scarred by centuries of cutting. Loch a Tuath reflected the darkly ominous clouds gathering overhead, ridged by the wind through which the small British Airways plane fought bravely to achieve a smooth landing on the short runway at Stornoway airport. The same wind that whipped about them now in the car park as they threw their overnight bags in the boot and sought shelter in Fin’s car from the first heavy drops of rain blowing across the moor from the west.
Fin started the engine and set the wipers going. It had taken them almost no time at the Scotlands People Centre of the National Archives of Scotland to track down John William and Peter Angus McBride, born 1940 and 1941 respectively, in the Slateford district of Edinburgh to Mary Elizabeth Rafferty and John Anthony McBride. John Anthony had died in 1944 while serving in the Royal Navy. Mary Elizabeth eleven years later from heart failure, the cause of which was not specified. Marsaili had paid for extracts of birth and death certificates for the entire family, and slipped them into a buff envelope that was tucked away now in the bag she held to her chest in the passenger seat.
Fin had no real idea how it was affecting her. She had said nothing throughout the flight back to the islands. He could only guess that she was reassessing everything she had ever known or thought about herself. She had just found out that although born and brought up on the Isle of Lewis she had, after all, no island blood in her. An English mother, a mainland father from a Catholic family in Edinburgh who had fabricated his entire life. It was a revelation.