Bryn and other officers come to the hospital to speak with me, but it’s fairly clear they have no intention of pressing charges on Fiona, or anybody else for that matter. Jamie threatened us with a gun and then fired in a confined space; his guilt is not in doubt. And neither, apparently, is his mental state—we have Jamie’s computer to thank for that. It holds some fairly odd stuff that Bryn doesn’t want to detail for me. And despite sophisticated efforts at hiding his tracks, the police easily prove that he bought the skull—which dates to the sixteenth century, and probably originated in Asia—from the Internet, which is not illegal (How can that not be illegal! I exclaim to Bryn), though the breaking and entering to lay it on a bedspread certainly is. With all that evidence corroborating our story, nobody is interested in a different narrative, procedures manual be damned. I get the impression that Fiona’s story and mine don’t quite tally exactly, but I have carbon monoxide poisoning, and she has always had her own issues; slight inconsistencies are apparently forgiven. Instead, Bryn lectures me about the smoke alarm. He seems oddly stricken at what has happened, as if he should have been able to stop it.

Callum comes to the hospital, too, immediately scrambling onto the bed to snuggle into me despite his mother’s protestations from the doorway. He has the sense to at least climb on the side without the sling. “Hey you.” I smile at the little face tucked against me. “How are you?”

“Good,” he says, then stops as if unsure he’s allowed to say that. “Uncle Jamie died.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” I’m sorry. The words sting as I say them. He didn’t need to die, I think, or one version of me thinks. I try to quash that version. No matter how many times I tell myself it wasn’t my fault, I still feel like I let it happen. When I stepped away from the kitchen, I knew something was wrong; I knew something was going to happen.

Clearly nobody has yet told Callum what Jamie did, because he says, “Grandad says he’s gone to a better place, but it cannae be that good.” He’s frowning. “Otherwise everyone would kill themselves right now and go there.”

I glance at Fiona, who is trying not to laugh. “I think life here is pretty good. Probably worth living that first.”

“Aye. Oh!” He brightens. “The cat had kittens! Four of them!”

“I heard.”

“You can have one now. You can have the cutest. It’s fine, Toast says it’s okay to go in the Manse now.”

I raise my eyebrows. “Toast can speak now?”

He giggles. “Dinnae be daft. She’s still a dog.”