On the way back down the stairs, I hear a snatch of music. Carrie must have found a radio. She likes to have noise in the background, a television or a radio or an iPod with speakers; I’m learning these things about her. I suppose I will learn a lot more as we live together in the coming weeks. If she does live with me, that is—when I suggested she stay with me in the Manse, I was more than prepared for her to politely decline. I’m still half expecting her to announce that she’s actually found a flat in Edinburgh for the duration of the play she’s in, which would surely be much more convenient for her. I haven’t lived with Carrie since I left my mother’s home at eighteen for university, and I’ve probably only seen her three or four times since she went to university herself four years ago. My fault, entirely. I could have handled things differently. I should have handled things differently.

The master bedroom door is open (was it open before?) and it stops me in my tracks: from the hallway, I can see the spectacular view afforded by the wide windows, over the lawn and the road and out across the stream that’s hidden by trees up to the craggy hilltops on the other side of the narrow valley. It’s a landscape of moss greens and bracken browns and gray granite, with the occasional splash of bright yellow April daffodils. An ancient landscape: one that makes no attempts to hide its years, stoically unflinching and contemptible of the petty jealousies and small prides of those who walk across it. The house is well suited to it—not this version with its bright pine beds and whitewashed walls, but the one I saw when I arrived. The Manse that lies beneath.

I take a small step into the bedroom, and as I do, I am suddenly absolutely sure the bed will be to the right of the doorway, facing those windows: a memory is slowly unraveling, a memory of entering this room in dim light, of walking all the way around the high bed to clamber onto the other side—a big scramble for a little person—where my father lay, warm and solid.