So Carrie is in Edinburgh, and here I am walking among the trees—mainly oak and pine, I think, but horticulture is not my strong point—which create an almost closed canopy, though the tree trunks are widely spaced and the ground level is clear of bracken or bushes. Instead layers—perhaps centuries—of pine cones, needles and leaves have created a thick brown-red carpet that delivers a spring to each step. I ought to have a dog, I think. A black Labrador, perhaps; something that looks like a gundog—and then I laugh at myself. As if I have any idea of how to care for a dog. As if I even really know what a gundog does.

It takes me five or six minutes to get to the other side of the wood, so I estimate it to be roughly half a mile wide, or perhaps less, because I appear to have veered off to the west a little given that I’ve come out at that end of the fishing lake. The lake—loch, I should probably say—isn’t large. It’s broadly kidney bean shaped, roughly two hundred meters by one hundred meters. For a body of water located in one of the most spectacular areas of Scotland, it’s curiously unpretty. There are no trees, no plants of any kind lining the water. I wonder if it was man-made. Walking around it is harder than expected, as in places the land rises very steeply away from the water into rounded hillocks, but there are a few areas of easy access, almost like dirt beaches, where I spot evidence of use: the odd empty crisp packet, a discarded can of Tennent’s Special. In one bush I spy a lid labeled PowerBait. My fishing lake—loch—does not go unused, it seems. I try to imagine spending an afternoon casting a line here. I’m not sure I can think of a leisure pursuit more mind-numbingly boring.

Back at the start of my loop, I survey the loch again before starting back: I could sell it without a single pang of regret. Not the wood, though. I feel differently about that. My father must have walked this wood. He must have known the landscape, known the people. And they knew him. It’s laughable that I hadn’t put that together, that I hadn’t considered I might encounter people who were acquainted with him. Were friends with him, even. Our parents were pals, you ken. Parents, plural. Perhaps not everyone will react like Morag, then. My parents had friends—the photos prove that. There are people who could tell me about them. About my father.