Callum’s hand slips into mine again, anchoring me. “Are you okay, Ailsa?” he asks quietly. “I willnae leave you either.”

My father is watching me. My father has always been watching me. You could say he’s a spirit or a ghost, you could say that he slipped into before, or later, but those would just be attempts to put into words what can’t be truly expressed or understood. Perhaps years in the future—a century or even two—mankind will possess the language to describe it, but that won’t be a language that any layman might comprehend. Mathematicians at the very pinnacle of the field, right at the bright frontier of discovery, will see the elegance of the equations that encircle where my father is, that wrap it and ensnare it in golden threads of Greek letters and symbols. They will be able to spout about quantum entanglement, the reversibility of time and the equivalence of mass and energy, but they still won’t actually see my father, because even reversing time in an equation can’t create mass from memory.

But nonetheless, wherever it is that he has gone, my father is watching me.

SEVENTEEN

Carrie telephones, as she always does, but I miss the call because I’m outside with Ali’s security camera guy. Later I find a text from her, in her telegram style, when I come inside to make a cup of tea for the camera guy.

Getting lift from station. Will pick up stuff for dinner on way x

A lift from Jamie, I suppose. I expect he’ll have told her about the bones. The bones that are nothing, of course; almost certainly nothing. I drove to the police station and handed them in once Jamie had collected Callum. The policeman behind the desk listened to my tale of discovery with only the merest hint of a raised eyebrow, looked dubiously at the tissue-wrapped collection then shrugged and found a form for me to fill out. I couldn’t have been there for more than fifteen minutes. Surely if he could see the bones were human there would have been a more excited response.

I text back:

Great. Thanks x

I’m at the front door saying good-bye to the camera guy when an ancient Volvo I don’t recognize pulls in, with Carrie in the passenger seat. I look across at the driver, but it’s not Jamie. It’s Fiona.

“Hey. Who was that?” Carrie calls across as she climbs out of the car, then reaches back in for a bag of groceries.

“That’s Finley,” says Fiona. She has climbed out too, and is eyeing the receding van thoughtfully. She must have come straight from work; she’s wearing jodhpurs, a fleece and boots. “He works for Ali.” I can only just hear her words. Then she turns back. “Hi, Ailsa.”