“Aye.” His grip is strong but brief. He looks like a man with a deep mistrust of anything frivolous. He pulls out a chair and sits opposite me, assessing me with sharp eyes that look as if life has bleached them of color. He has an extraordinarily weathered face, with skin like thick leather, and his dark gray hair is trimmed down to mere millimeters, military fashion. “Well. There’s barely an ounce of your mother in you, is there.” There’s literally nothing I can think of to say to that, but it doesn’t matter because he turns away to address the waitress who’s approaching in his thick local accent. “Aye, hen, gie me a latte and one of them billionaire shortbread slices.”

“Thanks for meeting me.” There’s something about his very presence which makes me feel instantly lightweight, as if nothing I could ever say or think or do could ever be of any import.

“Nae trouble,” he says, unsmiling. “My grandson would have been most upset with me if I hadnae.”

“Callum? He’s such a sweetie.” I’ve seen him a few times since his ball landed in my garden: once in the village with a lady I didn’t know, and twice when he crossed the three fields between our houses and came to the Manse by himself, Fiona having phoned ahead to make sure Carrie was looking out for him. I would have thought Carrie was more child friendly than myself, but for some reason it’s my hand Callum reaches for and my lap he scrambles into, and my heart feels defenseless each time.

“Aye, well, he likes you. And your biscuits.” I laugh, and the edges of his mouth lift briefly. A hard man to warm to, then, but perhaps not without kindness. “How are you settling in at the Manse?”

“Fine.” I start to shrug, then wonder if he will disapprove. It seems like he’s the sort of man who would disapprove of elbows on the table and shrugging and addressing men of his generation as anything other than sir. “It’s only temporary, anyway.”

“Ah. So you’re going to sell it, are you?” I nod. “Fi was born there, you ken.”

“What?” I look at him, bewildered. Surely he doesn’t mean in the Manse?

The corners of his mouth curl upward again, but with less warmth. “Aye. In the house itself. 1982.”

“But—wait, I would have been six. I was living there then.” How could she have been born there?