He watched Tormod in the rearview mirror as the old man gazed from the window, no sign of recognition in dull eyes. It had been a tiring drive down the spine of the long island. With the ferry crossing and stops for lunch and coffee, it had taken nearly five hours. The old man was weary and drowsy-eyed.

Where the single-track road curled around the head of the bay, Fin turned off on the gravelled drive that led up to the big white house on the hill. His car rattled over the cattle grid, and he drew it in beside the pink Mercedes. He and Marsaili helped Tormod out of the back seat. He had stiffened up during the long journey, and found it hard to move until he was out on the path and had straightened up to look around, feeling the cool breeze in his face, and breathing in the salt air. He seemed brighter now. His eyes clearer, but still without recognition as he gazed around the hillside and down towards the harbour.

“Where are we?” he said.

“Back where it all began, Mr. Macdonald.” Fin glanced at Marsaili. But her eyes were fixed anxiously on her father. “Come on, there’s someone I want you to meet.”

They climbed the steps to the deck and the front door, and as Fin pressed the bell they heard the chimes of “Scotland the Brave” sound somewhere deep inside the house. After a short wait, the door opened wide, and Morag stood there, a gin and a cigarette in one hand, Dino barking around her ankles. She took in the three visitors standing on her doorstep, before a look of resignation crossed her face like a shadow. She said to Fin, “I had a funny feeling you’d be back.”

“Hello, Ceit,” he said.

A strange intensity burned for a moment in her dark eyes. “Long time since anyone’s called me that, a ghràidh.”

“John McBride might have been one of the last.” Fin turned his head towards Tormod, and Ceit’s mouth fell open as she looked at him.

“Oh, my God.” She caught her breath. “Johnny?”

He looked at her blankly.

Fin said, “He has dementia, Ceit. And very little awareness of anything around him.”

Ceit reached across more than half a century to touch a love lost irrevocably on a stormy spring night in another life, and her fingers lightly brushed his cheek. He looked at her curiously, as if to ask, Why are you touching me? But there was no recognition. She withdrew her hand and looked at Marsaili.

“I’m his daughter,” Marsaili said.

Ceit laid her drink and her cigarette on the hall table and took Marsaili’s hand in both of hers. “Oh, a ghràidh, you might have been mine, too, if things had turned out just a little different.” She looked back towards Tormod. “I’ve spent a lifetime wondering what happened to poor Johnny.”