She stopped, as though thinking something through, before saying, ‘Forensics can take a while, despite what you see on TV. They’ll work out eventually how the lassie died, and no doubt they’ll also find proof of who did it.’ She looked to Joanne. ‘And it won’t be Greg. I’m certain of that.’

‘You know about me deciding to leave?’ Joanne said.

‘I do. I also heard that Caroline featured in that decision.’

‘She didn’t really, I’d already made up my mind.’

‘Can I ask why?’ Kath said.

‘To answer, I probably need to begin by telling you why I came to Blackrig in the first place.’

What she told Kath was true, although she’d softened the edges. In this version, Richard had become a nuisance, rather than a threat. Her visit here a way of escaping his attentions, and getting herself back into a good place to write, and, of course, to get to know Greg a little better.

She realized by the end that this sanitized version was the one she’d been portraying both to herself and the world for the past eighteen months. Even in pouring her heart out that night to Greg, she hadn’t been as honest as she might have been, although she had called Richard a homicidal maniac at one point.

Kath listened without interruption, her only reaction being to place her soft hand briefly on Joanne’s when she stumbled or took time to take a breath.

Sitting in silence afterwards, with just the sound of the bees feasting on Kath’s flower beds, Joanne briefly considered revealing the pregnancy. Something she hadn’t even told Lucy. Caution, she decided, was the better bet. She knew Kath would keep her confidence, but the truth had a way of revealing itself, despite all attempts to stop that happening.

Just as it had done with Ailsa.

‘Well, I’m glad to know your story,’ Kath was saying. ‘And I can assure you it will go no further. But . . .’ She hesitated. ‘I can’t help but feel that fate brought you here to Blackrig, and to Greg. It seems to me that you two meeting has made life better for the both of you, despite what you’ve been up against.’

As Joanne rose to go, Kath added, ‘And I wouldn’t join Caroline on the tea van, I’d go back to Beanach and have something ready for Greg if or when he gets a break from firefighting.’

Joanne

Greg came home only to briefly eat, shower and sleep for a few hours during the two days following.

In between, he told her there were five fire appliances mobilized from the nearest villages with around fifty firefighters and forty workers from the neighbouring estates, working in shifts, all battling to bring the wildfire under control.

‘Over four square kilometres of grassland, heather and woods is on fire,’ he’d told her.

‘What about Blackrig?’ she’d asked.