Later in the afternoon we head back out to the beach in front of the cottage. The sun is still warm, and Liam looks relaxed and happy as he sits beside me on the blanket sipping from a bottle of beer. He spots a flat stone and expertly skims it across the surface of the loch. We watch it bounce a half-dozen times and I cheer. He searches for more flat stones within reach and then tries to teach me, showing me how to angle my wrist and flick with one smooth motion, but I’m not very good and my stone sinks beneath the waves without even bouncing once.

Liam skims another one eight times to show me how it’s done. ‘I wonder what the world record is,’ he says. ‘If we had the internet, we’d be able to look it up.’ He looks a little put out that he can’t discover the world record and I know it’s because he’d like the challenge of being able to beat it.

‘I’m glad we don’t,’ I tell him. ‘It’s nice being cut off from the world.’

‘What if something happens though?’ he asks, scouring around him for more flat stones to skim.

‘Like what?’ I ask.

‘World War Three could break out, and we wouldn’t know about it.’

‘We’d probably be better off not knowing,’ I laugh. ‘It’s not as if we could do anything about it. It’s like stepping back in time here,’ I add. ‘And the Celts and the monks didn’t have phones or the internet.’

Liam nods. ‘Back then they had to rely on signal fires to warn of approaching threats.’ He finds a stone and flicks it across the water, frowning when it only bounces three times before sinking. ‘Damn,’ he mutters.

‘I’ll look for more stones,’ I tell him, getting up and wandering up the beach.

‘Make sure they’re flat,’ he calls after me.

My hunt takes me further along the beach towards the gnarly trees that mark its end. After stooping to pick up a good-sized pebble I stand and catch a glimpse of what looks like a man, standing among the trees. I blink and the person has vanished. I blink a few more times, my certainty that I saw someone fading. There’s no one there now, that’s for sure, but where could they have disappeared to?

I turn around and head back to Liam, who is standing with his back to me, knees bent slightly, body angled, perfecting his throwing stance. I watch him skim a stone and count the number of times it hits the surface of the water.

‘Twelve!’ he shouts, pumping his fist and looking around at me for a sign that I’ve witnessed his triumph.

‘I saw!’ I say, feigning excitement.