Alvis rose from the seat and, with a swift nod to the neighbouring child’s grave, acknowledged that he hadn’t been able to tell Marita that during the darkness of her incarceration Rhona had suffered a miscarriage, because even now the memory of his wife enduring the same loss was still raw in his mind.

The drive from Aberdeen to Inverness passed uneventfully. The fields were white, but the road a glistening black. He was aware that the majority of the snowfall had visited the west coast of Scotland, something unusual in itself, and that the roads into the west from the capital of the Highlands might not be as clear. And according to the weather report, Skye too had had a heavy fall.

Immediately after he’d ended the conversation with Chrissy, Alvis had set about cancelling his previously booked accommodation in Aviemore and then phoned the hotel he and Marita had stayed at before in Portree, only to discover it was shut for the winter season.

Checking online for an alternative, he suddenly remembered a pub, the Isles, in the main square where he and Marita had spent a great evening, listening to live traditional music. According to the webpage it also had rooms and was open during the winter months.

A quick call there set him up with a place to stay. According to the address Chrissy had given him, it was about an hour away from Rhona’s cottage. He’d already decided to play his visit to the island as though it was nothing to do with Rhona’s situation, something Chrissy had strongly advised.

‘If Rhona gets wind that you’re there because of what’s happened, you’ll be lucky if she even agrees to see you.’

‘That bad?’ he’d queried.

‘That bad,’ Chrissy had said.

Alvis had picked up food in Inverness and, checking the weather and road conditions, headed off by way of the Great Glen. Snow accompanied him en route, but more of a benign presence than a threat, falling softly and intermittently. The great expanse of water that was Loch Ness made him feel at home, although the sides were definitely not fjord-steep.

Passing the Cluanie Dam, he entered the golden pass of Glen Shiel. Alvis had experienced it all before, but his breath still caught in his throat at the sight of the white-topped river, the nearby crags carved during some prehistoric era, and the sadness of the tumbledown ruins of its past inhabitants, in many cases driven from their homes.

As the jagged pinnacles of the Five Sisters of Kintail rose before him in their snow-covered splendour, Alvis decided that one day he would return to climb the classic ridge walk that took in three Munros.

But not this week.