Willow and Sandy put together a scratch lunch in the kitchen at Springfield House. Willow was feeling restless. If she were on the Scottish mainland she’d be at the post-mortem by now. She’d know how Charles Hillier had died. Here, there seemed little to do but wait and she’d never been very good at that.

David had retreated to the walled vegetable garden. Earlier Willow had watched him from her bedroom window, digging and digging the uncultivated patch close to the shattered greenhouse, as if the activity would wear out his mind as well as his body and he’d stop thinking. She went outside to call him in for lunch, but even when she was right behind him he continued to plunge the spade into the sandy soil, then push it with his foot, his whole body straining to get the blade into the peaty soil, oblivious to everything else. She tapped him on the shoulder.

‘Come in and get some lunch. You need to eat.’

He stopped. His face was red, and sweat ran down his forehead and into his eyes.

‘Where is he?’

She didn’t have to ask what he meant. ‘Annie Goudie, the funeral director, has just arrived with a couple of men. Charles will be on his way to Lerwick soon. He’ll be on the boat for Aberdeen tonight.’ She paused. ‘Do you want to see him? To say goodbye?’

‘No!’ He turned away angrily as if he intended to continue digging, then stopped, the spade dropped to the ground at his feet, and faced her again. ‘I’m sorry, but I couldn’t bear it. To see him so unlike himself. When he was alive he was never still.’

She nodded. A wheatear flicked along the wall that separated the garden from the open hillside. ‘Is there anything I can get you? Tea? Water?’

He nodded towards a bottle of water standing on the path that ran around the garden. ‘I’m fine. Really, it’s very kind, but I’m better out here.’