‘Yes.’
He shook his head. ‘Not really, no. But the lieutenant doesn’t want to take any chances.’
Although she had not nearly finished her tea, she stood up then and carried her mug towards the kitchen, but stopped next to the settee to look at him. ‘Why are you the one they left to watch over me?’
‘I volunteered.’
The merest widening of her eyes was the only sign of her surprise. ‘Why?’
‘Because I knew there was no danger of me falling asleep.’
She held his eye for a long moment, then broke contact and went into the kitchen. He heard her pouring her tea down the sink and rinsing out her mug, then she turned out the light and went through to the back bedroom. A few moments later she appeared with a single white duvet and a pillow. She laid the duvet over the back of the settee and dropped the pillow beside him. ‘Just in case,’ she said. ‘Goodnight.’
The light in the stairwell went out when she’d climbed to the landing. He heard her move across the floor above him, and the creak of her bed as she slipped into it. He flirted momentarily with the thought of her naked between cool sheets, but quickly forced it from his mind.
He sat for a long time in the half-light cast by the reading lamp before getting up to cross the room and switch it off. He went to lock the front door then and turn on the outside light in the porch before going through to lock the back door. Locking doors, he knew, was anathema on the island, but he was not going to take any risks.
He went back to the settee and took off his shoes, then lay along the length of it, his head propped on the pillow she had left. The light from the porch shone through the windows, casting long shadows across the room. By its reflection he picked out the cracks and dimples on the ceiling that would become his focus during the long sleepless hours ahead.
From time to time he heard her turning over and wondered if she, too, was failing to find sleep. There was an odd sense of intimacy in his being here, so close to her as she lay in her bed just above him. And yet there could hardly be a greater gulf between them.
After a while he began to feel cold. The heating had gone off, and the temperature outside was dropping. He reached up and pulled the duvet over himself. Its softness enveloped him, and he felt his own warmth reflecting back from it. He took a long, slow breath and closed aching eyes. He thought about his ring. And the pendant.
He tried to remember if his father had ever made mention of the ring. Where it had come from. Why it was important. But he had never paid enough attention to family stories. About their Scottish roots. His heritage. Sime had been too busy fitting in. Being a Quebecois, speaking French. All that had really stayed with him were those stories his grandmother had read from the diaries, still so vivid, even after all these years.
It is raining. A fine, wetting rain, almost like a mist. A smirr. It blows in off the sea on the edge of a wind that would cut you in two.
I am with my father. But we are gripped by fear, and running crouched along the line of the hill behind and beyond Baile Mhanais, where it dips down towards the sea loch that I know as Loch Glas. My clothes are soaked and I am almost numb with the cold. I am not sure of my age, but I’m not much older now than when Kirsty and I first kissed by the standing stones beyond the beach.
My father’s old torn cloth cap is pulled down low above his eyes, and I see how black they are as he looks back over his shoulder. ‘For God’s sake keep down, boy. If they see us they’ll come after us, and put us on the boat, too.’
We reach an outcrop of rocks almost buried by peat at the top of the hill. And splashing through a stream in spate, we throw ourselves down into the wet grass behind them. I can hear voices carried on the wind. Men shouting. We crawl forward on our bellies, until we have a view down the slope to the shore of Loch Glas, and the village of Sgagarstaigh with its little stone jetty.
My eye is caught at once by the tall, three-masted sailing ship anchored out in the loch. And by the crowd of villagers on the quayside. Before my attention is drawn to the smoke and flames that rise up from the village itself.
The paths between the blackhouses are littered with furniture and other household debris. Sheets and prams, broken crockery, children’s toys. A group of men swarms from house to house, shouting and yelling. They carry flaming torches with which they set light to the doors and roof thatch of the houses.
