Greg had been surprised at how hard the local crew had fought to save the hated Party House. Or perhaps by saving it, they’d hoped to bring it back from the dead in the eyes of the folk of Blackrig.

Of course, what happened to it now lay with Global Investment Holdings, not the local community.

He’d spoken only once by telephone with Chalmers since the fire, when he’d been given the impression that whoever was currently at the helm of the company, it certainly wasn’t Stratton.

Why, he didn’t know for certain, although thinking back to Chalmers’s attitude at their last meeting, he wondered if Stratton’s behaviour that night in the pub had demonstrated how bad relations were with the locals.

Regardless of why he had gone, Greg was relieved that he had. He wasn’t expecting Chalmers to do a better job, he just thought he couldn’t do worse.

Putting on the coffee machine, he went to feed the dogs before making his own breakfast.

Despite the freshness that met him as he stepped outside, he still found himself checking for the scent of burning. When you’ve been immersed in that smell for as long as the Blackrig crew had been, it was difficult to get rid of it from your nostrils.

He stood for a moment, breathing the hill air, aware that the summer scents would be different this year, especially in August. Much of the surrounding heather-clad hills had been reduced to ashes. The heather in those parts wouldn’t, couldn’t, bloom this year and he would miss the heady scent of it.

Glancing up at the bedroom window, he thought of Joanne and what her decision would be, now that she was no longer in fear of going back to London.

After the fight in the lochan, Richard Longman had been removed by the police and taken to Inverness police station, arrested for his attack on Joanne.

He might have been accompanying him had Josh not pulled him off the bastard when he did. He would be eternally grateful to Josh for doing that. As far as Josh was concerned, he had just been returning the favour of that night at the ceilidh. Or so he’d said.

He’d taken Joanne to Kath’s after that, not wanting her to be alone at Beanach, and there she had stayed, writing up her blog report of the fire until it had finally been extinguished.

He, like Josh and Finn, had gone back to fighting it, with all their efforts focused on the Party House, which had become a symbol of survival, rather than one of death.

In the end, the battle had been won by the rain, but they had been the army that kept the enemy at bay until the rain had arrived.

Heading back inside, he found Joanne up and busy at the stove.