Marsaili stopped in the doorway and looked around the empty room. Pictures had been taken off the walls, the desktop cleared. She went to open its drawers. Empty. The filing cabinet. Empty. Old boxes filled with his bric-a-brac were gone. The place was sterile, disinfected, as if her father had been a disease. All trace of him removed. She turned to face her mother in disbelief. “What have you done?”

“He’s not here any more.” Guilt fed her defensiveness. “I’ll not have my house cluttered with his old rubbish.”

But the accusation in Marsaili’s voice was unmistakable. “Mum, you were married to him for nearly fifty years, for God’s sake! You loved him. Didn’t you?”

“He’s not the man I married.”

“Which isn’t his fault. He has dementia, Mum. It’s an illness.”

Fin said, “You’ve thrown everything out?”

“I wasn’t going to put it out till bin day. It’s all in boxes in the front hall.”

Marsaili was pink-faced with indignation. She raised a solitary finger in her mother’s face. “Don’t you dare throw that stuff out! Do you hear? These are my dad’s things. If you don’t want them in the house, I’ll take them.”

“Take them then!” Guilt fuelled anger now. “Take the damned stuff. I don’t want it! You can burn it for all I care!” And, close to breaking, she pushed past Fin, hurrying away down the hall.

Marsaili stood breathing hard, staring at Fin with fire still in her eyes. And he thought that at least she had rediscovered her feeling for her father. He said, “I’ll put the back seat down and we’ll load up the car.”

Condensation steamed up the kitchen windows in Marsaili’s bungalow. The cardboard boxes had got wet in the transfer from the house to the car and then the car to the bungalow. But their contents had been protected by the bin bags that Fin had taped over the top of them. There had been nothing to save Fin and Marsaili from a soaking, though. Fin had stripped off his wet jacket immediately, and Marsaili was still rubbing her hair vigorously with a large towel.

Fionnlagh stood watching as Fin opened up the boxes one by one. Some contained photograph albums, others old accounts. There were boxes of junk, tools and tins of nails, a magnifying glass, boxes of unused pens whose ink had all dried up, a broken stapler, cartons of paperclips.

Fionnlagh said, “I’ve sort of made my peace with the Reverend Murray.”

Fin looked up. “He said you’d been to see him.”

“Several times.”

Fin and Marsaili exchanged glances. “And?”

“You know he’s agreed to let Donna and Eilidh stay here.”

Fin nodded. “Yes.”

“Well, I told him I was going to quit school and try to get a job at Arnish. To make sure I could feed and clothe us all.”