According to the police, Caroline’s story matched the forensic material they’d collected from the body. Flakes of Caroline’s skin had been under Ailsa’s nails. Clumps of hair in Ailsa’s hands.

For five years Caroline had been carrying this guilt, knowing that everything she’d done was in the hope that Mac would be born and make them the family she craved.

The sentence was what Greg had been told to expect. In respect of culpable homicide on the basis of a minor assault leading to death, Caroline was given a custodial sentence of two years. For her attempts to pervert the course of justice by burying the body, she had three years added to that. Her time in remand would be taken into account.

As for Finn, he was given two years for aiding and abetting his sister in the disposal of the body.

Greg didn’t return directly to Beanach after the trial, but drove instead to Ard Choille.

He wanted to remember the times as teenagers that he and Caroline had spent by the lochside. To remember how things had been between them back then.

An Lochan Uaine’s green hue changed with the shifting lights of the seasons, but to his mind it always looked magical. A green fairy loch like the fairy glen.

They’d spent a lot of time here together. Most of every summer, even after they took up summer jobs, him on the estate, her at her family’s shop. She’d had to bring Finn along some of the time. She never seemed to mind that, although he had occasionally been irked by her wee brother’s presence.

When had everything changed between them?

Listening to Caroline’s story of that terrible night, he could now see where all the lies and omissions had begun, both his and hers. The jigsaw that portrayed their lives – Caroline’s, Ailsa’s and his own – had finally been put together, and at its centre was his betrayal of both women.

Something he was going to have to learn to live with.

That, and the fact that Joanne wasn’t coming back.

He turned from the loch and walked towards Ard Choille.

He and Colin had made a point of trimming the lawn until such time as the grass had finally given in to the fast approach of winter. They’d also done their best with the house. They’d got rid of all the mud and soot, although without an okay from Global Investment Holdings, they couldn’t order the repairs to begin.

The sauna by the water had been destroyed by the fire; the gaping hole that had been Ailsa’s grave, they’d filled in themselves.