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
“We’re looking for information about the family who used to live next door.”
“Oh.” The man relaxed a little. “The Macdonalds.”
“Yes. Did you know them?”
He laughed. “I’m afraid not. I’m Glasgow born and bred. This is my folks’ place. They moved to the mainland in the late fifties and had me just after they got there. I might even have been conceived in this house, though I couldn’t swear to it.”
“They would have known the neighbours, though,” Fin said.
“Oh, aye, of course. They knew everyone around here. I heard a lot of stories when I was a boy, and we used to come up for the summer holidays. But we stopped in the late sixties after my dad died. My mum passed away five years ago, and I only decided to come back and restore the place last year after I got made redundant. To see if I could make a go of it as a crofter.”
Fin looked around and nodded approvingly. “You’re doing a good job so far.”
The man laughed again. “A little redundancy money goes a long way.”
Gunn asked, “Do you know anything at all about the Macdonalds?”
The man sucked in a long breath through clenched teeth. “Not first-hand, no. Though they were still here the first year or two we came on holiday. There was a family tragedy of some sort, I don’t know what. One year we came back and they’d upped sticks and gone.”
Gunn scratched his chin thoughtfully. “You don’t know where?”
“Who knows? A lot of folk followed their ancestors from the days of the Clearances, over to Canada.”
Fin felt a chill now on the edge of the wind, and zipped up his jacket. “They wouldn’t have been Catholics, would they? The Macdonalds.”
This time the man roared his mirth above the howl of the wind. “Catholics? Here? You must be kidding, man. This is Presbyterian country.”
Fin nodded. It had seemed an unlikely scenario. “Where’s the nearest church?”
“That would be the Church of Scotland at Scarista.” He turned and pointed south. “Just five minutes away.”
“What are we doing here, Mr. Macleod?” Gunn stood disconsolately in the metalled parking area at the top of the hill, huddled in his quilted jacket, nose red from the cold. Although the sun rode in patches like untamed horses across the hill and the beach below, there was little warmth in it. The wind had turned around to the north, breathing unpitying arctic air into their frozen faces.