‘I’m not that sort of doctor,’ Rhona said. ‘And I’m only here on holiday.’

Matt and Donald exchanged glances which Rhona couldn’t interpret, although she suspected they thought her extended stay might be about Jamie. Something she made no effort to contradict.

Let them think that. It saved her an explanation.

‘So, do you fancy having a go at one of the target sports while you’re here?’ Matt said.

‘What’s on offer?’ Rhona said, glad to change the subject.

‘How about trying your hand at axe throwing?’ Matt suggested.

‘I get to throw an axe at a target?’

‘Not a human one, but yes.’

‘Bring it on,’ Rhona said, feeling her mood definitely lifting. She might not have a human target but there was one face she might like to visualize as one.

Blaze, who’d seemed to be intently absorbing their conversation, now set off towards a nearby sheltered range.

‘He knows the routine?’ Rhona said as they all trooped after the collie.

‘Blaze effectively runs the place,’ Donald told her.

Matt selected an axe from a stand and offered it to Rhona.

‘It’s really modelled on a tomahawk,’ Matt explained. ‘Lighter than what most people think of as an axe and the head isn’t fixed to the body.’

Rhona liked the shape of it, the pattern on the handle and the weight of it in her hand. It didn’t feel heavy and nothing like the wood-chopping axe at the cottage.

‘Throwing this type of axe is not about strength,’ Matt told her, ‘but technique. At the right distance, and thrown in the correct manner, the axe should turn once in the air before meeting the target head-on.’

He showed Rhona how to hold the axe, then swing it back over her right shoulder.

‘You’re going to bring it forward and simply release it.’

Rhona rarely handled anything that might be described as a weapon, if you omitted the tools she used to do her job. But then again, anything might become a weapon in an emergency, she thought. At which point a flashback hit her with surprising force and for a moment her hand held, not the tomahawk, but a bloodied slither of glass from a broken wine bottle.

Rhona stared down at her hand, remembering . . .

‘You okay with this?’ Matt whispered under his breath.

Rhona dispelled the memory of the last time she’d tried to stab something. ‘Tell me one more time.’

Matt guided her hand back so that the axe would begin its flight from just behind her right shoulder. ‘At this distance when released it will turn once, then embed in the target. And remember,’ he reminded her, ‘it’s not about strength.’

Rhona took a deep breath and relaxed, then followed his instructions exactly.

It was over in a second, followed by the whooping of all three men as her axe embedded itself firmly in the top of the target.