He turned at the sound of Tormod’s cursing as the old boy’s glasses slipped off the end of his nose and fell into the urinal. The mishap did nothing, however, to lessen or divert the stream of yellow urine issuing from Tormod’s bladder into the trough. If anything he seemed to be aiming for his glasses. Fin sighed. It was clear to him who was going to have to retrieve them. And when finally Tormod finished peeing, Fin leaned past him to reach down delicately and pick the urine-drenched glasses out of the runnel.

Tormod watched in silence as the younger man rinsed them thoroughly under running water from the tap before lathering his hands with soap and rinsing them, too. “Wash your hands now, Mr. Macdonald,” he said, and he leaned into the cubicle to retrieve some soft toilet paper to dry off the glasses. When Tormod had finished drying his hands Fin replaced his glasses, planting them firmly above the bridge of his nose and behind his ears. “You’d better not let that happen again, Mr. Macdonald. We don’t want you peeing down your legs now, do we?”

For some reason Tormod found the notion of peeing down his legs quite hilarious. And he laughed heartily as Fin led him back out into the bar.

Marsaili looked up expectantly, a half-smile rising on her face at the sight of her father laughing. “What happened?”

Fin sat the old man down. “Nothing,” he said, and handed her the spare pair of trousers neatly folded. “You’re dad’s still got a great sense of humour, that’s all.”

As he sat down he saw the grateful look in Tormod’s eyes, as if the old man knew that for Fin to have recounted the truth would have been a humiliation. There was no knowing what he thought, or felt, or how aware he was of anything around him. He was lost in a fog somewhere in his own mind. Perhaps there were times when the fog cleared a little, but there would also be times, Fin knew, when it would come down like a summer haar and obscure all light and reason.

The Solas daycare centre was to be found on the north-eastern outskirts of Stornoway in Westview Terrace, a modern, single-storey building angled around car parks front and back. It stood next door to the council-run Dun Eisdean residential care home for the elderly, surrounded by trees and neatly manicured lawns. Beyond, lay white-speckled peat bog shimmering briefly in the last sun of the afternoon before the rains would come. In the slanting yellow light they looked like fields of gold, stretching away to Aird and Broadbay. From the south-west, dark clouds rolled in on the edge of a stiffening wind, bruised and ominous and pregnant with rain.