There’s a silence that sits over us all, despite the hubbub from the rest of the room. The laughter and the warmth of singing “The Skye Boat Song” might as well have happened years ago. “How is it that I’ve lived here for fifteen years and never heard that story before?” The question comes from someone farther down the table; I’m not sure who exactly.

“I ken it,” says Fiona.

“And?” asks Ben. “Is there any truth to it?”

She nods. “There’s something to it. Ali hasnae quite got it right, though.” She sounds thoughtful. “The minister didnae betray his congregation. He saved some of the bairns—I dinnae ken how, but he put them out of reach.” Ali doesn’t dispute her. Somehow Fiona seems to have the authority on this.

“Ah, but then why would the Manse be haunted?” Jamie asks, winking at me to show his tongue is firmly in cheek.

“Is it really, though?” says Fiona in a musing tone. It sounds like she’s taking the question seriously. I glance across at her in surprise, but she’s partially hidden by Ben’s lean bulk. All I can see are her fingers playing with the wax drippings at the base of a candlestick. Sturdy fingers, with the nails filed short. Despite my own flights of fancy, I know that if the Manse is haunted at all, it’s by the non-ethereal, fully corporeal woman sitting to Ben’s left. It doesn’t seem any more comforting as a prospect than ghosts.

“Having spent two perfectly lovely nights in it, I can assure you the Manse is not in fact haunted,” says Carrie pragmatically.

“Unless you’re prepared to count a dodgy boiler as a manifestation of paranormal activity,” I add.

Ben laughs, and suddenly the bubble bursts and the rest of the world rushes in, with its music and chatter, the clink of glasses and bursts of laughter. But I notice that Ali’s looking at me again, in a return of that jerky gaze which makes me feel like I’m watching a movie shot in the handheld camera style where the frame never quite stays still. I pick up my wineglass. Somehow it’s full again. I need to be careful—I can already feel the effects of the alcohol, how it loosens the way I hold myself together.

“All okay?” asks Ben quietly in words meant just for me. There’s an intimacy in that, and in the heat that crosses the tiny divide between his thigh and mine, but a careless intimacy; I suspect he just can’t help himself.