Amnesia

Friday 5 March 1999, Wyvis, Scotland

He heard a cry, almost a scream, cut short. Then the rapid tap of feet on floorboards.

‘Jesus Christ! What happened to you? How long have you been there like that? Oh, you poor wee man!’

The voice was Scottish, female, concern verging on panic.

He was lying on something hard. He was cold. And his head hurt like hell. He tried to open his eyes but he couldn’t.

He felt a gentle nudge on his arm. And then a hand on his cheek. Warmth.

‘You’re so cold! Are you alive, pet? Wake up! Open your eyes!’

His eyelids felt as if they were zipped shut, but he wanted to reassure the woman before panic overwhelmed her.

He forced them open. He saw a pair of tight blue jeans. And a concerned, lined face beneath short blond hair. A tattoo of a Chinese character in green ink on a collarbone.

‘Thank Christ! You are alive!’

He tried to say ‘yes’, but all he could manage was a groan.

His head hurt. A herd of elephants wearing stilettoes was performing a dance at the back of his brain.

‘You’re freezing. Stay there! I’ll call an ambulance.’

The woman disappeared from view, and he heard her voice on a telephone.

He was lying on a wooden floor. He lifted his cheek. It was sticky. Blood — he could smell it, the tang of iron, of rust.

He tried to haul himself upright, but he couldn’t. He tried harder. Somehow he pulled himself up onto his elbows, dragged himself a couple of feet across the floor, and twisted round so that his back was resting against the wall.

He was in a hallway. Above him, a steep, spiral wooden staircase, shiny with wear, curved into darkness. Next to him, a patch of dry brown spread across the floorboards. He raised his hand to his cheek, and then to the back of his skull. His head was caked in the stuff. The elephants were still dancing.

The woman returned, and squatted on the bottom step of the staircase staring at him. She was tall, long-limbed, about forty. Kind blue eyes. ‘Don’t worry. They’re on their way.’

He tried to say something. He couldn’t. He tried harder.

‘Who are you?’ he managed to croak.

The woman’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. ‘Och, you know who I am! I’m Sheila. Sheila MacInnes? From the Stalker’s Lodge?’

‘I don’t know who you are,’ he said.

Then another, more worrying question occurred to him.

‘Who am I?’

1

Saturday 13 March 1999, St Andrews

Clémence huddled deep into her coat against the wind threading its way through the university buildings from the North Sea, only a quarter of a mile away. One day into the spring vacation, the town was already almost empty of students. Clémence was staying on: she lived in Hong Kong, and for one reason or another, she couldn’t go back there for the holiday. She had just dropped her friend Livvie off at Edinburgh Airport to join a university ski trip somewhere in Austria. Livvie had said Clémence could borrow her car while she was away, provided Clémence picked her up the following week.

It was very nice of her — the car was a cute yellow Clio, brand new — but where would you drive to in Scotland alone in the middle of March?

She had also dropped off her boyfriend Callum, who was taking the bus back to Glasgow, where he was going to be working in a pub to earn much-needed spending money. They had only been going out three weeks, but Clémence would miss him. The university discouraged students from staying on in the vacation, and she would be virtually alone in St Andrews. She had considered asking Callum whether she could stay with him, but it was too early in their relationship for that. Maybe she would visit him for a couple of days over the weekend.

She had moped in her room in halls for an hour, and then set off for the university library. If she was going to be stuck in St Andrews, she may as well use the time productively. She had fallen behind with her work: a bit too much socializing, a bit too much drinking, way too much faffing about. Callum. Nothing drastic, nothing that a couple of weeks in the library wouldn’t sort out.

St Andrews was an ancient university of beautiful buildings, but its library looked like a car park built in the 1960s. Yet it was familiar, it was welcoming, and it was out of the wind.

She was walking through the entrance to the entry gates, when her phone buzzed. She checked the number and grinned. An American international dialling code. New York.

‘Tante Madeleine!’ she said. ‘How are you?’

Tante Madeleine was actually a great-aunt, the sister of Clémence’s long-dead French grandmother. It was Aunt Madeleine who had paid for Clémence to go to boarding school in England, and who was now paying for St Andrews. Clémence’s own parents were teachers, divorced from each other, and earning little money. More importantly, it was Aunt Madeleine who cared about her.

They spoke in French. ‘Oh, Clémence, darling, I am so worried. I need to ask you a favour, a very great favour. I hope you can help me?’

‘Of course,’ said Clémence, more worried herself by how long the favour would take to explain than what it actually was. International calls from Aunt Madeleine ate up her phone credit.

‘There is an old friend of mine, of your grandparents, called Alastair Cunningham. Have you heard of him?’

‘Maybe,’ said Clémence. ‘I think he visited us in Morocco when I was little.’

‘That’s right. Well, he knew your grandfather at university, then became a doctor and emigrated to Australia. Anyway, he came back to Britain last year and now he lives in the highlands of Scotland in a little cottage somewhere.’

‘Do you want me to visit him?’ said Clémence. ‘I can. It’s the spring vacation and I can borrow a car.’

‘It’s more than that,’ said Madeleine. ‘Last week he fell down the stairs and hit his head. It is serious: so serious he has lost almost all of his memory. He’s in Inverness Hospital, and he has no relatives still alive in this country, nor friends for that matter.’

‘Poor man!’

‘Exactly. Somehow the hospital got hold of my number, and I am planning to fly over to Scotland to organize things for him. But could you fetch him from the hospital in Inverness and take him back to his cottage and look after him? It will only be for a few days. I remember you saying that you volunteered at the old people’s home?’

‘All I do is read to them,’ said Clémence. ‘I don’t know how to look after them.’

‘The hospital say he is ready to go home,’ said Madeleine. ‘I don’t think it will be too difficult.’ She paused. ‘I know it is a lot to ask, Clémence, and I would understand if you said no. I can probably employ a nurse to stay with him, but I feel so bad for the poor man.’

Clémence did too. She had a reputation for being a bit of a ditz, partially justified, and she wasn’t confident of her ability to take care of a sick old person. But her Aunt Madeleine rarely asked her for anything — never asked her for anything — and Clémence owed the old lady so much.

Besides which, St Andrews, a town she normally loved, was already beginning to depress her.

‘All right, Aunt Madeleine. I will go and pick him up tomorrow.’

They discussed details and then Clémence hung up, a little worried about what the next few days would bring, but pleased she still had some phone credit left.

Sunday 14 March 1999, Raigmore Hospital, Inverness

‘Who the hell are you?’

The old man’s brown eyes stared up at her, shrewd, angry but also unsure. Vulnerable.

‘Clémence,’ she answered, in as encouraging a tone as she could muster.

‘Do I know you?’

‘No. I mean yes. Sort of. We met when I was little. In Morocco. But not since then.’

The old man took in the information from his position propped up in the hospital bed. He looked a tough old bird: firm wrinkles, a square jaw with a cleft chiselled at its centre, a thinning grey buzz-cut mocked by dense shaggy eyebrows. His eyes were sharp. Demanding. But unsure.

‘Are we related?’

‘No,’ said Clémence. ‘I’m Madeleine’s niece, or rather great-niece. Madeleine Giannelli? A French lady? An old friend of yours?’

‘I know who Madeleine Giannelli is,’ said the old man, with a flash of irritation.

The nurse, an Irish woman who had been hovering behind Clémence’s shoulder, leaned forward. ‘Be nice to the girl, Alastair. She doesn’t know what you can remember and what you can’t.’

The irritation switched from Clémence to the nurse. Then the old man grunted. ‘They tell me Madeleine is an old friend,’ he said. ‘I have to believe them. So far she is the only friend of mine they have discovered. I have no family, apparently.’

Clémence glanced at one end of a neat scar, the stitch marks still visible, that sneaked up the side of the old man’s skull from his pillow.

‘She’ll be here as soon as she can,’ said Clémence. ‘She lives in America. I’ll bring you home and take care of you until she arrives.’

The old man looked Clémence up and down doubtfully and grunted. The nurse clucked her disapproval.

Clémence thought the old man had a point.

‘Ah, here’s Dr Stenhouse,’ the nurse said.

Clémence turned to see a small dark-haired woman in a white coat moving towards her briskly.

‘Are you here to take Dr Cunningham home?’

It took a moment for Clémence to realize that the doctor was talking about the old man, not one of her colleagues. ‘Er, yes,’ she said.

‘Can I have a word before you go?’

‘Of course,’ said Clémence.

‘I’ll get Alastair ready,’ said the nurse.

Clémence followed the doctor away from the beds to a quiet corner beyond the nurses’ station.

‘I’m very glad you can do this,’ said the doctor. ‘It’s not just that we need the bed. Dr Cunningham may be eighty-three, but he was a very fit man when he came in here, and if we keep him in too long, his muscles will atrophy and we’ll never get him out of bed.’

‘Has he recovered fully?’ Clémence asked.

‘Physically, yes,’ said the doctor. ‘He fell on the stairs and the trauma was quite severe. He was unconscious for several hours and, as you can see, he has suffered severe memory loss. He had a subdural haematoma which we had to drain surgically. An MRI showed that he had sustained at least two previous head injuries in the past; your aunt says he used to play rugby, which might have been responsible. He was admitted nine days ago, but he hasn’t complained of a headache for three days.’

‘What about the wound?’

‘It’s healing nicely. Bring him back next week and we’ll take the stitches out.’

‘Can he remember anything at all?’ Clémence asked.

‘He has retrograde amnesia, which means he has lost the ability to recall events in his past dating back to his childhood. He can remember his parents, but not his late wife, for example. But he can remember everything required for day-to-day life. He could probably drive a car, although I don’t recommend you try that one out. He doesn’t remember going to medical school or being a GP, but he has a detailed knowledge of medicine.’

‘Could it be Alzheimer’s?’ Clémence asked.

‘No, it’s definitely trauma. Alzheimer’s doesn’t show up in scans, but Mrs Giannelli said he was alert mentally the last time she spoke to him, and showed no sign of memory loss. Although, if he did have incipient Alzheimer’s, then a head injury could easily make things worse.’

‘Will he get any of these memories back?’

‘Probably. That’s where you come in. Jogging his memory is the best way to encourage recall, but that’s difficult when there seems to be no one in this country who knows him. But do the best you can. That’s why it’s important to take him back to his home. He moved into a cottage on the Wyvis Estate up by Loch Glass last year and shut himself away. The stalker’s wife up there, Sheila MacInnes, is responsible for renting out the cottage and cleaned it for him once a week. Fortunately, she pops in almost every day to check on him, and she discovered him at the bottom of the stairs.’

‘That is lucky.’

‘She says there are plenty of papers there and photos; she found your aunt’s address on a letter on his desk. Try to talk through those with him. Do you know much about him?’

‘Almost nothing,’ Clémence said. ‘Only the little bit my great-aunt has told me.’

‘Well, phone her and find out what you can. When your aunt gets over here in a few days, I’m sure she will be able to help a lot. Now, make an appointment with me back here for early next week, and we will see what progress he has made and take care of those stitches. The district nurse will check in on you to make sure he’s all right, but I don’t anticipate any problems.’

She might not, but Clémence did. Stuck in a cottage with a grumpy old man who could barely remember his own name suddenly seemed like a big responsibility for a twenty-year-old. It scared her. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all.

The doctor seemed to sense her doubts. ‘Mrs Giannelli said you had experience working with old people?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Clémence, smiling. ‘Yes, I do.’ Reading to them. Not feeding them or wiping their bums or washing them.

No. This wasn’t going to work. ‘Look. Can’t he just stay here for a few days until Madeleine arrives?’ Clémence said. ‘It might be better for him in the long run.’

Dr Stenhouse’s lips pursed. ‘When fit and healthy old people have severe injuries one of two things can happen. Either we and they give up and they spend the rest of their life in a bed in a home somewhere, or we pull our fingers out and help them and they recover. I’ve seen people take the easy option too often, not just doctors, but relatives and the patients themselves. You can never be sure in these cases, but in my judgement, there is a chance that if you take Dr Cunningham back to his home and talk to him and jog his memory, he might recover. That’s not certain by any means, but it’s a possibility. He’s a brave man, not the kind of person to take the easy way out. But if you leave him here to rot, he will do just that. That is for sure.’

Pull yourself together, girl, the doctor was saying. Fair enough, thought Clémence. She didn’t know the old man, but he needed her help and she should give it.

‘OK,’ she said. ‘I’ll do it. Let’s go back and get him.’

2

Clémence drove north out of Inverness, the old man silent beside her. They were soon on the high modern bridge crossing the Moray Firth, with the jumble of the port of Inverness beneath them on one side, and an oil rig lurking in the firth on the other. In the distance, to the north-west, stood a broad-shouldered, white-caped, mountain.

‘Is that Ben Wyvis?’ Clémence asked.

‘How should I know?’ said the old man. ‘I didn’t even know I was in Scotland till they told me.’

‘Take a look at the map,’ said Clémence. ‘It’s on the back seat.’

The old man hesitated, and for a moment Clémence thought he would refuse, then he twisted around, retrieved the map and examined it. She suddenly had an awful thought that his reluctance might be because he had forgotten how to map read.

He hadn’t. ‘We’re on the A9, aren’t we?’ he said.

‘I hope so,’ said Clémence.

‘Yes, that’s Ben Wyvis.’

‘Your cottage is on the other side of that, by Loch Glass.’

‘I see it. On the map, it looks like it’s in the middle of nowhere.’

‘It does, doesn’t it? Is that coming our way?’

Behind the mountain, large dark clouds were gathering.

‘I think it is.’

Great, thought Clémence. She wasn’t a confident driver, and navigating narrow mountain roads in a storm with a grouchy old man beside her didn’t sound like much fun.

They were on the north side of the Moray Firth now, on the Black Isle, the peninsula of rich farmland between the Moray and the Cromarty firths: low rolling hills, fields of green and brown, scattered whitewashed buildings with grey roofs.

‘So what do you know about yourself?’ Clémence asked.

‘Nothing,’ said the old man. ‘Absolutely nothing.’

‘Oh come on,’ said Clémence. ‘You must know something. We have to start somewhere. Did you speak to Aunt Madeleine?’

‘No,’ said the old man. Clémence waited.

The old man sighed. ‘She told the nurses I was born in 1916, grew up in Yorkshire, went to Oxford University, became a GP back in Yorkshire, and then I emigrated to Western Australia in the nineteen sixties. I got married and then divorced. No children. And then for some reason I came back here last year and rented a cottage at this place called Wyvis. Why I suddenly did that I have no idea.’

‘Sometimes people want to go back to their roots, don’t they?’

‘Yes, but I never lived in Scotland! Or at least I assume I didn’t. I don’t know, do I? I don’t know anything!’

The frustration burned in his voice.

‘But you remember Yorkshire?’

‘Yes,’ said the old man. ‘Or at least the Yorkshire of my childhood.’

‘Well?’

‘Well what?’

‘How was that? The Yorkshire of your childhood? Where did you live?’

The old man looked at Clémence sharply. ‘You don’t know what it’s like, do you? You’re just a child. You can’t possibly know what it’s like — to have forgotten everything.’ The bitterness oozed from his voice. ‘I don’t see how they think you can help me. This is just a waste of time.’

Clémence realized that unless she did something about the old man’s attitude soon, the next week was going to be a nightmare. They were passing a turn-off to a small village. She swerved off the main road and followed a narrow lane for fifty yards, until she came to a gate, where she pulled over. Two shaggy red cows with long sharp horns looked up to study the car from beneath unkempt fringes.

‘Hey! What are you doing?’

Clémence switched the engine off and turned towards the old man.

She kept her voice calm but firm. ‘Dr Cunningham. You’re quite right, I can have no idea what it’s like to be you. But remember what the doctor at the hospital said? It would be easy for all of us to give up on you. You spend the rest of your life in a hospital bed, watching Countdown on TV, without knowing who you really are. You forget how to walk, how to look after yourself, and everyone loses interest in your life. You lose interest in your life. So at some point it stops and everyone just gets on without you. Do you want that?’

The old man had raised his bushy eyebrows. Now he lowered them. But he didn’t answer her question.

‘Because if you do, I can take you back to the hospital right now. But if you don’t...’ She smiled, and softened her voice. ‘I’ll help you. I’ll help you get better. I’ll help you remember.’

The old man glared at her.

‘Now. Shall I take you back to hospital?’

For a moment Clémence thought the old man was going to say yes. Then he closed his eyes. He sighed. ‘No,’ he whispered.

‘Say that again. Louder.’

‘No,’ the old man repeated, looking at Clémence. There was anger in his eyes, but there was also need. He did need her help.

‘So when I get back on the main road and ask you questions about your life, you will have a go at answering them?’

The old man nodded slowly. ‘All right. I will.’

Clémence examined his face to check whether he meant what he said. He seemed sincere.

‘OK. Let’s go.’ She executed a five-point turn in the lane, and within a minute they were back on the main road heading north.

‘All right. So tell me about Yorkshire.’

The old man said nothing. Frustrated, Clémence took her eyes off the road to shoot him a quick glance. But he seemed preoccupied, thinking. She decided to let him.

Eventually, he spoke. ‘We lived in a little town called Pateley Bridge on the River Nidd. My father was a doctor there. We had a grey stone house with ivy growing up the outside to my bedroom window. I can remember that clearly. I can remember my little sister Joyce.’ He paused, but this time Clémence sensed not reluctance, but pleasure at the memory. ‘I can remember her giggle; she used to giggle constantly. I loved to make her laugh. I used to do impressions of her friends, or the teachers at the school. Even politicians on the wireless. I could do a good Ramsay MacDonald, I remember.’

‘Go on.’

‘What?’

‘Go on. Do your Ramsay MacDonald.’

The old man hesitated and then cleared his throat. He spoke in prim, clipped Scottish tones: ‘“My friends, we are beginning a contest which will be one of the most historical in the story of our country.”’

‘Very good!’

‘How do you know? Do you even know who Ramsay MacDonald was?’

‘I certainly do,’ said Clémence. ‘Prime minister before the war. Labour? No, Liberal.’

‘Labour and then the National Government. Bit of a twit, quite frankly. Born working class, did his best to die a toff.’

‘Do you know who the current prime minister is?’ Clémence asked.

‘I do, as a matter of fact, but only because the doctors told me. Some chap called Tony Blair. But I do remember the one before him, or maybe it was two before him. Margaret Thatcher. And James Callaghan before her, and Harold Wilson and Edward Heath.’

‘Not bad,’ said Clémence.

‘And I know who won the 1966 election in Australia. Harold Holt for the Liberals beat Arthur Calwell for Labor. Now isn’t it strange that I can remember that, but I can’t remember the name of my own wife?’

‘Yeah. That’s seriously weird.’

‘The wiring in my brain is a complete mess. I need a good electrician. Do you think you’re a good electrician, Clémence?’

‘An expert,’ she said, knowing she wasn’t.

They drove on. Then he smiled. ‘There is so much I remember of my childhood. I have been going over it all in my mind in bed in the hospital. I went away to boarding school. I played rugger, I was good at it, I played centre three-quarter for the first XV. Then...’

He sighed. ‘Then it just disappears. The doctors think I might have had a concussion at school, which is when the wiring in my brain first became damaged. Who knows? I certainly don’t.’

‘We’ll get it back,’ said Clémence.

The old man frowned. ‘I hope so,’ he said. ‘I really hope so.’

They drove on, the light grey of the sky darkening. Soon rain was splattering the windscreen.

‘This last week has been very odd,’ said the old man, staring straight ahead at the rain. ‘Without memories, you don’t know who you are. I have to accept who other people say I am. They say I’m a doctor. I know medical things, I know that the metacarpals are fixed to the distal carpal bones, so I must be a doctor. They say I have spent much of my life in Australia. I know that the Mundaring librarian is called Jeanette, so I must have lived in Australia.’

‘It must be weird,’ said Clémence. ‘But maybe we can figure out where Mundaring is, why you know the library. Then we can piece together that part of your life. And then another part, and another, until it all makes sense.’

The old man smiled. ‘Thank you for your help, Clémence. I’m sorry I was so ungrateful back there. It is actually good to have someone from my old life — my real life — with me. But sometimes it just seems too difficult. And it’s frightening. I mean, why don’t I have any friends in this country? And if that’s the case, why am I here? What sort of person am I? Am I kind? Am I generous? Am I mean? I know I’m bad-tempered, but maybe that’s just the frustration of my situation. And why did my wife leave me? Was I unbearable to live with? Or was she? Did I have an affair? Did she? Am I trustworthy? Can I trust myself?’

‘God, I see what you mean,’ said Clémence.

‘And what happened to Joyce? She was younger than me; is she dead? I hope not.’

She must be, thought Clémence, or someone would have found her. As must be his parents, obviously.

‘If I were a young man, perhaps I could start a new life, a new personality. But I’m eighty-three! Or so they say. Far too old to start a new life. And barely enough time to recover the old.’

Clémence looked across at the old man. He met her glance. His eyes were uncertain. How would she feel if she were him? Lost. Afraid. Alone.

They drove on in silence, the rain turning to sleet. They came to the long, low bridge over the Cromarty Firth, with the town of Dingwall only just visible through the murk. She had an idea.

‘Who was your best friend at school?’ she said.

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘We’ve got to start somewhere. Let’s begin with what you do know.’

The old man nodded. ‘All right,’ he said, smiling. ‘I know the answer to that. Porky Bakewell. His real name was Dennis, but we called him Porky because he was so thin.’

And he told her all about Porky, and what they used to do together. Damming a beck on Greenhow Hill, exploring the forbidden disused lead mines, drawing endless maps of an invented tropical island, getting in trouble for trying to lasso Mr Heptonstall’s bullocks. As the old man relaxed, his voice became a warm rumble. And actually, the adventures of Porky Bakewell and the young Alastair Cunningham were entertaining, at least to Clémence. One of her skills was that she was easily amused. Lucky that.

They turned off the main road at the village of Evanton, and climbed a steep wooded glen, the sleet turning to snow. After five miles or so, they reached a wooden bridge over what the map told them was the River Glass. The bridge was guarded by the Stalker’s Lodge and a high white metal gate bearing the sign Wyvis Estate. Private Road.

The words ‘Wyvis Estate’ were familiar to Clémence. She wondered if this was the mythical Scottish estate that had once been in her grandfather’s family. Maybe she was making false connections, but on the other hand that might explain why the old man had decided to ensconce himself there.

It was a beautiful spot. The snow had stopped. Soft white flakes clung to the needles of the pine trees that surrounded the lodge, and the road was slick with a damp film of it, cut with neatly spaced wheel tracks. The low late-afternoon sun slunk beneath the clouds retreating to the east, and glistened on the drops of water already being squeezed from the thawing snowfall.

Clémence left the old man in the car and, as she approached the lodge, she spotted an envelope on the doorstep bearing an approximation of her name, CLEMENTS, printed in large letters. Inside was a note from Sheila MacInnes, enclosing a key and giving directions to the old man’s cottage. Mrs MacInnes had stocked the place up with essentials and she promised she would drop by that evening if she could, or else the following morning. She had parked the old man’s car in a shed at the lodge to keep it safe.

They followed the track from the Stalker’s Lodge and drove through woods beside the stream. According to Mrs MacInnes’s directions, they would reach Loch Glass in a mile. Clémence drove carefully; Livvie’s Clio was new, and the last thing she wanted to do was to slide off the snow-covered road into a ditch or a tree.

The old man was silent, preoccupied.

‘Does any of this seem familiar?’ Clémence asked.

‘No,’ said the old man. ‘It’s just...’

‘Just what?’

The old man looked away. ‘I’m not sure now I do want to remember my old life.’

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t know,’ said the old man. The smile had gone and the wrinkles were firmly set in a frown.

They emerged from the woods and a long curved loch appeared in front of them, a deep royal blue. Loch Glass. On the far side of the loch was a wall of almost vertical rock. Above them, on their side of the water, rose the massive dome of Ben Wyvis, a pure white hump against the pale-blue sky. The sun was low in the sky now, and the great mountain cast a shadow over the top end of the loch, which took on a darker grey colour.

‘It’s beautiful,’ said Clémence. ‘No wonder you chose to come up here.’

They drove along the shore of the loch, which seemed to be uninhabited, except for a white cottage on a little spit of land. Smoke was rising from its chimney.

The track was in good condition, luckily for the Clio, which had no trouble gripping through the thin layer of snow. After a couple of miles, the water curved around to the left, and a handsome house came into view at the head of the loch a mile or so ahead. It was large but fell short of meriting the term ‘castle’; in fact the gables and stockbroker Tudor timbering gave it a home counties feel. Beside it rose a stand of tall Scots pines, and in front squatted two small square buildings, also of stockbroker Tudor.

‘That’s not it, is it?’ Clémence said, slowing to consult her directions.

‘No,’ said the old man.

Clémence glanced at him. ‘You remember?’

‘It’s hardly the kind of cottage that an eighty-three-year-old man would live in alone, is it?’ he said, with a grin.

‘I suppose not,’ said Clémence, feeling a little stupid. Indeed, the directions called upon her to turn left up the slope from the loch through a wood.

The wood was a tangle of deciduous trees, clambering up the rock-strewn hill from the loch shore. Their trunks were silver grey, and they were twisted and heavily laden with thick green moss and white scoops of snow. Their branches ended in a mass of tangled fingers. The track rose steeply for a couple of hundred yards, until it emerged into a clearing, in the centre of which stood a square, trim stone cottage in a simple garden protected by a wooden picket fence. A weather-beaten sign board announced Culzie in faded black lettering.

3

Clémence unlocked the front door to the cottage. The old man shuffled along behind her.

The cottage immediately charmed her. A flagstoned hallway led through to a cosy sitting room, panelled in wood with a large stone fireplace. Prints of highland scenes lined the walls, and the floorboards were covered in ancient threadbare rugs. A steep wooden spiral staircase, with rope acting as a banister, led up to the bedrooms. The kitchen seemed both quaintly old-fashioned and useful, with modern appliances and a microwave, Clémence was glad to see. Mrs MacInnes had been busy: everything was tidy, and there was a faint smell of polish.

‘This is lovely!’ she exclaimed.

The old man looked around him, with a slight frown. Clémence had the impression that memories were stirring, but she didn’t want to ask him right away for fear of irritating him.

He helped her carry in the shopping she had bought at a Tesco’s on the way from St Andrews to Inverness, and his own small suitcase. He seemed to know immediately which of the three bedrooms upstairs was his. Mrs MacInnes had set up one of the others for Clémence, and the third was a small study with a desk.

Clémence unpacked the groceries, paid for with the promise of a five-hundred-pound transfer into her bank account by Aunt Madeleine for expenses. Given what Mrs MacInnes had already supplied, the cottage was now well stocked. Then she went into the sitting room and studied the fireplace. She squatted and began to stack the wood in a neat pile in the grate.

‘Do you want some help?’ The old man was watching her.

‘Not much call for wood fires in Hong Kong,’ said Clémence, embarrassed by her ignorance.

‘Oh, don’t worry about it,’ said the old man, unstacking the wood and rolling the sheets of newspaper by the fire up into complicated shapes. ‘It’s good there’s something useful that I can actually remember how to do. Here, let me show you.’

He soon had it lit, and they stood back to admire his work.

‘Why aren’t you back there now?’ the old man asked. ‘In Hong Kong? I suppose it’s too far to go just for a couple of weeks?’

‘That’s right,’ said Clémence. ‘It’s just too expensive.’ But she knew she was looking shifty as she said it — Aunt Madeleine had always paid for flights home in the school holidays and would be happy to pay for them while Clémence was at university. Clémence had never been a good liar, and from the way the old man was looking at her, she was pretty sure he knew she wasn’t telling the truth.

She fled to the kitchen and set about preparing an early supper. Her cooking skills were limited, her repertoire cheap-and-easy student food, but she was good with pasta. While she was cooking, she was aware of the old man pacing around the house, picking things up and putting them down again. He went outside for a few minutes, to walk around the tiny garden and stare through the trees to the loch below.

Mrs MacInnes had left a bottle of red wine, and Clémence opened that, even though she had brought her own supply. She and the old man sat down.

‘Are you hungry, Dr Cunningham?’ she said, as she served him.

‘I am, actually,’ he said. ‘And call me Alastair. Everyone seems to think that’s my name, and so I must take that on trust.’

‘You must know that’s your name,’ said Clémence. ‘Isn’t there some recognition?’

‘Yes, there is now,’ said Alastair. ‘And some of this is familiar. I know that the corkscrew came from that drawer, for example,’ he said, pointing to the second drawer down.

‘You know, I think my grandfather might have owned this estate. Or my great-grandfather,’ said Clémence. ‘I recognize the name, Wyvis.’

‘But you can’t remember?’ said the old man with a grin.

Clémence laughed. ‘No. But I can ask Grandpa. He’s still alive. He lives in London.’

‘That’s Madeleine’s brother-in-law?’ said Alastair.

‘That’s right.’ For a second Clémence assumed that he had remembered something, but then realized that it was just what the doctors and she had told him. At least it showed his short-term memory for new things was working well.

‘I’m surprised they didn’t send him up here,’ said Alastair.

‘He’s pretty old,’ said Clémence.

‘So is Madeleine, presumably.’

‘That’s true,’ said Clémence. ‘And her husband died last year, run over in Arizona, it was horrible. But she is a terrific organizer, whereas no one expects very much from Grandpa. I think he’s an alcoholic? Or used to be. I don’t know him very well. But I will give him a call tomorrow and ask him about you.’

‘So his wife was Madeleine’s sister?’ said the old man.

‘Exactly. My grandmother. I never knew her; she died long before I was born. Drowned on holiday. No one likes to talk about it.’

‘She was French,’ said the old man frowning, fighting for memory.

‘Yes,’ said Clémence. They were still on information the old man had been given or could deduce.

He looked up at Clémence, his eyes shining. ‘She was very beautiful. Wasn’t she?’

Clémence remembered a black-and-white portrait of her grandmother that her father kept in his bedroom. ‘Yes, she was.’

‘She looked like you.’

‘Did she?’ She glanced at the old man, who flashed a grin of unexpected warmth, even charm. She felt herself blush. ‘I thought she had blond hair?’ Clémence’s was dark.

‘She did. But she had your eyes. And your chin. And there is something about the way you move that reminds me of her.’

‘That’s fantastic, Alastair!’ said Clémence. ‘You remember her!’

He smiled. ‘Yes, I remember her. I don’t remember your grandfather, or this Madeleine woman, but I do remember her.’

‘Perhaps if I describe Grandpa, you might remember him,’ Clémence said. ‘His name is Stephen. Stephen Trickett-Smith.’

‘No, Clémence. I’m tired. Let’s start on all that tomorrow.’

‘OK,’ said Clémence. ‘The doctor said that we should go through your papers and photos to see whether that might jog anything. Do you mind if I look at them? I feel bad about going through your private stuff.’

Alastair didn’t answer. The smile had disappeared. For a brief moment his face seemed stricken with something close to horror, and then his jaw set.

‘What is it, Alastair? If you don’t want me to look through your papers, I won’t. We can just talk.’

He finished his pasta and put down his knife and fork. ‘The truth is, I’m scared of what you might find. What I might find.’

‘You mean some horrible secret?’ Clémence had said this with an attempt at humour, but as soon as the words were out of her mouth she regretted them.

‘Yes,’ said the old man. ‘That’s exactly what I mean. We all have secrets. But I have a feeling I have a particularly unpleasant one.’

‘OK, that’s fine. I have no desire to learn your unpleasant secrets,’ said Clémence. And she didn’t, she really didn’t. ‘Why don’t you go through your papers yourself and you decide what you want to talk to me about?’

The old man frowned. Then he seemed to shake himself, and he smiled at Clémence. She liked his smile. The wrinkles in his face, the deep valleys and the canyons, rearranged themselves in a lacework of smaller, narrower lines, radiating across his cheeks. It was a shame he wasn’t someone’s grandfather. ‘That was a very good supper, Clémence,’ he said. ‘I really appreciate you staying with me, and helping me with this, and I’m sorry I was so difficult earlier.’

‘That’s OK,’ said Clémence.

‘And now, I know it’s early, but if you don’t mind, I’d like to go to bed.’

Clémence cleared the table as the old man climbed the stairs to his room. He was slow, but he seemed to have no real trouble. Nor had there been any discussion about Clémence needing to help him get to bed. That was a relief. She would go up and check on him in half an hour or so, just to make sure.

She was looking forward to helping him try to recover his life. Clémence had a tendency to feel sorry for people, and she definitely felt sorry for the old man. It was bad enough to be an old person alone without family or friends — she had met enough of them at the nursing home — but the idea of lacking memories as well appalled her. No wonder he had appeared frustrated and scared; she wasn’t sure how she would cope if she was in his position. The loneliness must be almost total. She remembered the pleasure he had shown at recalling his sister, how he had warmed to his memories of Porky and his childhood.

And the rest of his life? All gone. Erased as if it had never existed.

She could forgive his grumpiness, but she was very glad she had had the courage to stand up to him. She could help him. She was patient, she was a good listener, she was easily entertained. She would help him.

It was dark now outside the cottage, and she heard the quavering hoot of an owl from somewhere among the twisted trees. She felt very alone here, she and the old man in a little house miles from anywhere. And it was miles from anywhere. Three miles to the Stalker’s Lodge and five miles beyond that to the village of Evanton and the Cromarty Firth. It felt both creepy and exciting at the same time. For a girl brought up in overcrowded Hong Kong, the emptiness and desolation of the Scottish Highlands had a lot going for it. It was one of the reasons she had chosen to go to St Andrews, about as far removed from a big-city university as you could get.

But then St Andrews was also a long way from her parents, which seemed to suit them very well. Not for the first time she wondered, if they had lived in Scotland rather than Hong Kong, would she be going to university in New Zealand?

She stuck the plates in the dishwasher, tidied the kitchen and went up to her room to fetch a book. The light was on under the old man’s door, and she could hear him moving around inside there. She thought of knocking on his door and asking if he was OK, but decided not to in case it irritated him.

She peeked in to the study. It was a small room containing a desk, a chair, a bookcase and a tatty armchair. An Ordnance Survey map showing Loch Glass hung on one wall, and a print of a golden eagle on another. She examined the books on the theory that you can tell a lot about a man from his bookshelf. There weren’t many of them: half were about birds, although there were one or two novels — William Boyd and Ken Follett — and some history — Stalingrad, a book on the Norman Conquest and another on the Crusades. A couple were on local subjects.

A blue air-mail envelope lay in the middle of the old man’s desk. It was addressed to Dr Alastair Cunningham at Culzie, Loch Glass and it had been opened. Clémence recognized the handwriting. She flipped it over, and sure enough, the sender’s address was that of her Aunt Madeleine in New York City; it must have been the letter Mrs MacInnes had found. Clémence was about to slip out the couple of sheets of paper inside it, when she stopped herself, remembering her promise not to look through the old man’s private papers.

Despite what Mrs MacInnes had said, Clémence couldn’t see much evidence of private papers or photos in the study, but she resolved not to look too closely. All that would be up to Alastair to check. So she went back to her own room, pulled out a copy of Le Cid by Corneille, a set text for her French Literature course, and took it down to the sitting room, noticing on the way a darker stain of brown peeking out under a rug at the foot of the stairs.

She shuddered. Blood. Alastair’s blood.

There was no TV, of course, although there was a telephone in the hallway. She knew she should telephone Aunt Madeleine in the States, and possibly also her grandfather, but she thought she would leave that until the next day. She also wanted to ring Callum, but she knew he would be working. She couldn’t even text him — although she had brought her mobile phone with her, there was no reception. So she put some more wood on the fire and curled up on the sofa.

Le Cid was hard going. It wasn’t just that the French was archaic, the plot didn’t inspire her. All that courtly love and self-denial in the name of honour was just dumb, in her opinion. Not for the first time she wondered why she hadn’t chosen the module on twentieth-century existentialism.

She put the book down and stoked the fire. The house was quiet, perhaps the old man had put himself to bed. As she replaced the poker, she saw a neat pile of paper on the floor next to the old leather armchair.

She examined it. The paper was yellowing, and slightly dirty. It was a manuscript, in spiky black Biro handwriting. The title page proclaimed Death At Wyvis by Alastair Cunningham and a date: 23rd May 1973.

No one had mentioned anything about Alastair writing a novel. Presumably it hadn’t been published. But Clémence’s interest was far more piqued by the manuscript than Le Cid.

A novel couldn’t be private, could it? Perhaps it could. She hesitated. If it turned out to be steamy, or really bad, she would just pretend she hadn’t read it.

She carefully shifted the manuscript to the sofa and began to read.

She read the first sentence and let out a small cry, her hand flying to her mouth.

Clémence sat bolt upright, the sheet of spiky writing shaking in her hand. But wait a sec. She was letting the cottage’s isolation, the owl, the dark, the old man’s fear get to her. If the old man had written a novel called Death At Wyvis, then of course it might start with a murder.

She had to read on.

The first page of the novel was a brief prologue. It continued:

What she had just read couldn’t be the truth, could it? Alastair Cunningham couldn’t have killed someone, murdered someone? Surely this manuscript must be a novel rather than a memoir? A killing he had imagined, rather than experienced.

But it sounded like a memoir. It sounded like the frail old man upstairs had murdered someone right here at Wyvis. Clémence hadn’t seen a boathouse on the drive up to the cottage, but there could easily be one on the shore by the woods. She would check first thing in the morning.

That would explain the dreadful secret he didn’t want to remember.

And if, in fact, Alastair had murdered someone, she knew who it must be.

Sophie. Her grandmother, whom everyone had said had drowned, but who had actually been killed by the old man upstairs. And when the ‘I’ in the manuscript had begged the nameless woman to leave her nameless husband, what he had really been doing was telling Clémence’s grandmother to leave her grandfather.

If the Wyvis Estate had in fact been in her grandfather’s family, they could easily have gone there on holiday. And if her grandmother had indeed been murdered, and they wanted to lie to a little girl about it, they might have claimed she had drowned. They would have claimed she had drowned.

Had the old man upstairs murdered her grandmother?

No. No, she didn’t know that. She was jumping to premature conclusions. It must be a novel, after all, perhaps written after Alastair had visited her grandparents at Wyvis. She had no proof it was a memoir. It just... it just felt like one.

She had to find out, right away. Clémence crept up to her room, determined not to alert the old man, and dug out her address book. She picked up the phone in the hallway and dialled Aunt Madeleine’s number in New York. It was mid-afternoon New York time. Clémence had no idea of Aunt Madeleine’s routine, she just hoped she was in.

The phone switched to the answer machine, and Aunt Madeleine’s thick French accent asking the caller to leave a message.

Clémence left one, in French.

‘Aunt Madeleine. It’s Clémence. I have Alastair and I have taken him back to the cottage at Wyvis. But I need you to call me as soon as you get this message. It’s urgent!’ Then she read off the phone number from the label on the face of the phone.

What now? She could hardly ask the old man if his manuscript was true. Her question might shock him into remembering: more likely it would throw him into confusion. But she had to know.

Wait a moment. She recalled something she had spotted earlier that evening. She climbed the stairs and turned on the light in the study. She checked the little bookshelf. There, next to Stalingrad, stood a slim hardback book with a blue jacket, bearing the words Death At Wyvis on the spine. The author was Angus Culzie.

This cottage was called Culzie. The name had to be a pseudonym.

She pulled the book off the shelf. The cover showed a stag on a moor looking down at a generic loch. She carried it downstairs and opened it.

© 1974 Angus Culzie. The publisher was Woodrow and Shippe, a firm Clémence vaguely recognized.

The first page, the prologue, was identical to the manuscript.

She turned the page to the first chapter and read the first couple of paragraphs. She then checked back with the manuscript. They were identical, except that the narrator had been transformed from Alastair into Angus.

She read the rest of the chapter, and then put it down.

Never mind the Alastair and the Angus. There were other names in there she recognized. Stephen Trickett-Smith. Madeleine de Parzac, and her sister Sophie.

It was a memoir. The old man upstairs was a murderer. And he had murdered her grandmother, her beautiful grandmother!

Her heart was beating rapidly and the book was shaking in her hands. She closed her eyes. Oh, God, what should she do now? What the hell should she do now?

She was alone in an isolated cottage with a murderer. She should just leave: take the book and drive off. Call the police. Call Madeleine. Leave the old man to fend for himself.

But. But the novel or memoir or whatever it was had been published. People would have read it. Aunt Madeleine would have read it, Grandpa, the police. This was all news to her, but not to everyone else.

Yet it would be news to the old man upstairs. He didn’t know he was a killer. Or at least not yet.

She had an idea; she knew what she would do.

4

Monday 15 March 1999, Wyvis

The old man opened his eyes. Sunshine was leaking into his bedroom through a gap in the curtain, and the birds outside were making a racket.

He stood up, pulled back the curtain, and looked over the trees to the bare hillside of Ben Wyvis above him, still covered with snow. He scanned the ridge closest to the cottage, looking for movement, and spotted some. He grabbed the pair of binoculars he kept at the ready and focused on a small group of hinds making their way up the hill towards the high tops.

That wide expanse of moorland was known as Wyvis Forest, although there was not a tree standing up there.

He pulled back the curtain of the other window, the one facing down towards Loch Glass, a ruffled grey in the breeze. The loch was rarely smooth like a looking glass, but was often grey, for glas was the Gaelic word for grey-green. Over the top of the birch trees, and on the other side of the loch, he saw the rocky face of Meall Mòr, smeared with streaks of snow. He scanned the sky for eagles, but couldn’t see any.

But there was movement right below his bedroom window. He saw Sophie setting off down the narrow footpath into the woods.

Sophie?

It couldn’t be Sophie. Of course it wasn’t Sophie. It was that girl Clémence, Sophie’s granddaughter, and the great-niece of that woman called Madeleine.

And he didn’t know who the hell he was.

Except for a minute there, he had. He had woken up, recognized the room as his bedroom in Culzie Cottage, known his name was Alastair Cunningham, remembered the details of the surrounding landscape and...

And what else? He knew about Sophie. Sophie as a nineteen-year-old, about Clémence’s age. Seeing her by a harbour somewhere in France. Her laughing.

Then something else. Something unknown. There was something very bad about Sophie, about remembering Sophie. Dread. Cold dread clutched at his chest.

What was it?

He needed to pee.

He went into the bathroom, peed, washed his face and shaved. He noticed Clémence’s washing bag on the bathroom cabinet.

He liked her. He liked that she had an aura of familiarity, that she had a link, however tenuous, to his real life. He touched the scar on the back of his skull. It was barely sore any more.

And Clémence was absolutely right; if he was going to get over his injury, he would have to remember who the hell he was. And here, in the almost-familiar surroundings of Culzie, he felt he could do it, with her help. If there were indeed nasty secrets, then he would just have to share them with her. The embarrassment or shame would be worth it, worth getting his life back.

He stuck his head into the study. He almost knew what was in there. Together he and Clémence would attack it. After breakfast.

He dressed and went downstairs to the kitchen, boiled water, found the cafetière straight away and filled it with coffee, and laid the table for breakfast.

He saw her return up the narrow path through the woods, wearing a baggy green jumper and leggings. She looked grim.

‘Good morning!’ he greeted her, with a smile, as she came into the kitchen.

She looked at him in surprise, and then at the table in more surprise.

‘Breakfast?’ said the old man. ‘I can make you some bacon and eggs if you want.’

‘Oh, no, thank you,’ said Clémence with an attempt at brightness. ‘I’ll just make myself a piece of toast.’

‘Did you go down to the boathouse?’

Clémence looked at the old man sharply. ‘Yes. How did you know there was a boathouse down there? We didn’t see it from the road on the way here.’

‘I suppose I must have remembered it.’

The old man tried to catch Clémence’s eye, pleased with his small success, but she turned away from him to pop some bread in a toaster. They stared at it in silence. Some of Clémence’s warmth of the day before had left her.

That was understandable. Here she was, a young woman trapped in the middle of nowhere with an old git she didn’t know from Adam. Actually, he didn’t know her from Eve.

She did remind him of Sophie, although she was pleasant-looking, rather than beautiful. She was tall, a little on the plump side, with very straight dark hair, big blue eyes and clear skin. He smiled to himself as he noticed a few large freckles on the end of her nose. He counted them. Four. Sophie had had three.

‘Clémence is a nice name,’ he said. ‘Does it have something to do with your grandmother?’

‘Not really,’ said Clémence. ‘My father is half-French, as you know now, but then my mother is French also. They met in Morocco. He teaches English and she teaches French. So I suppose I am three-quarters French.’

‘You don’t have a French accent.’

‘No. I’m perfectly bilingual. My parents moved to Vietnam when I was small and then to Hong Kong. They split up three years ago; my mother is still there but my father moved back to Vietnam. I was sent to boarding school in England and then St Andrews University. I don’t know whether I am French or English or what I am.’

‘In that case your surname would be Trickett-Smith like your grandfather?’

‘Just Smith. My father dropped the Trickett. He dropped just about everything. He left England and became a hippie in the sixties. He still is one, really. Rupert Trickett-Smith isn’t a cool name for a hippie.’

‘I suppose not,’ said the old man. ‘I’m sorry about your parents splitting up.’

Clémence shrugged. She looked away, studying the orange rubbish bin in the corner of the kitchen. Despite her ostentatious lack of interest, he sensed she actually wanted to say more, and he was tempted to ask her, but it was none of his business.

He put the bacon and eggs back in the fridge, poured himself a bowl of cereal and sat down to eat. He wanted to find out more about her, and searched for a safer subject. ‘What are you studying at St Andrews?’

‘French mostly. Some English Literature, some Philosophy. But I think I am going to do my honours in French.’

‘I read history at university,’ the old man said.

Clémence was buttering her toast and looked up sharply. ‘The doctor said you studied medicine.’

‘Yes,’ said the old man, frowning. He grinned. ‘Who knows?’

Clémence bit into her toast. They ate in silence.

‘You know I’d like to take you up on your offer to help me recall my life,’ said the old man. ‘We can go up to the study after breakfast, if you like.’

‘Actually, I’ve got an idea about that,’ said Clémence. ‘Wait a sec.’

She disappeared from the kitchen and the old man heard her running up the stairs to her bedroom. She reappeared a minute later carrying a thin hardback book.

‘Do you recognize this?’ she asked him.

He read the title. Death At Wyvis by Angus Culzie. ‘No.’

‘Do you know who Angus Culzie is?’

The old man paused and thought. Nothing. Somehow he thought he should know who Angus Culzie was, but nothing. It was so frustrating. ‘I’ve no idea. Except that this cottage is called Culzie, isn’t it? It must be a pen name. Either that or it’s an amazing coincidence.’

‘Well, this book is all about you,’ Clémence said.

‘About me?’ The old man stared at the book, confusion boiling up inside him. ‘How can that be? Who is Angus Culzie? How does he know about me? Are you sure?’

‘All good questions, Alastair. But I thought we could read the book together. Then perhaps you will remember.’

‘What about the death in the title? What’s that? I mean, it happens here, does it? The death.’

‘I don’t know, I presume so,’ said Clémence. ‘Let’s read the book and find out.’

‘Have you read it?’

‘Only the first chapter. It’s definitely about you, but for some reason you are called Angus not Alastair. My grandfather Stephen is in it. And Madeleine. And Sophie.’

The old man’s confusion turned to panic. Fear. ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

‘What don’t you know?’ said Clémence. ‘Are you afraid of the truth?’

‘Yes,’ replied the old man, honestly. ‘Yes, I am.’

‘And do you know what that truth is?’ asked Clémence. She was watching him closely, with those big blue eyes.

‘No, I don’t. I’m not sure I want to.’

Clémence tossed the book down between them. ‘Well, it’s entirely up to you. But if you don’t want to find out who you really are, I will leave now. It’s clear you can look after yourself and you don’t need me.’

The old man stared at the book, and then at Clémence. Her expression was firm. She meant what she said.

There was something bad in that book, he knew it. But he had to face up to it. At the age of eighty-three he couldn’t pretend to himself that he could start a new life with a blank slate.

He needed to find out who he really was. And, whoever that man turned out to be, to learn to live with him.

And he really didn’t want Clémence to leave him.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Let’s read it.’

They carried their coffee into the cosy sitting room. The old man sat in the armchair and Clémence lit the fire. She picked up the book and it seemed to him that she skipped over the first couple of pages. But then she began to read.

For a couple of seconds, nobody did anything.

Then Elaine let out a shriek. ‘Is he dead?’

I was the doctor’s son, so I leaped to Alden’s side to check. The American’s eyes were open, lifeless. He couldn’t have died so quickly, could he? I grabbed his wrist to look for a pulse, but I couldn’t immediately feel anything and so I felt Alden’s neck instead. Despite what my father had done and what I intended to do, I had no clue. But those eyes were staring.

‘I think he is,’ I said. ‘The sword must have pierced his heart.’ Actually, I had no idea whether that was the case, but it seemed plausible.

‘Fuck,’ said Nathan. ‘Fuck.’

‘Why did you do that?’ said Tony. ‘Why did you kill him?’

‘I thought he was going to slit Stephen’s throat. I didn’t mean to kill him. I just meant to distract him. Fuck.’

Stephen had rolled over out of the way of Alden, and was now on all fours, staring at the body. ‘If it’s any comfort, I thought he was going to kill me too.’

‘Is he really dead?’ Horror had ripped apart Elaine’s soft young face, and she began to cry.

We all stared. After the drink, the laughter, the warmth, the body didn’t seem real. It was as if only Elaine had appreciated the reality, the rest of us were still stunned.

Someone had to do something. ‘We’ve got to get help,’ I said. ‘An ambulance.’

‘There’s no point in ringing for an ambulance if he’s dead,’ said Stephen.

‘The police,’ said Sophie.

They all looked at Tony. He was the oldest amongst us, the only real adult.

His face was pale. ‘Don’t look at me,’ he said. ‘I have nothing to do with this.’

Elaine’s sobs turned into a wail. Sophie moved over to comfort her.

‘We can’t call the police,’ said Stephen. ‘Nathan will be done for murder.’

‘Fuck,’ said Nathan.

‘We can explain what happened,’ I said.

‘What happened was he killed Alden and we all saw it,’ said Stephen.

Nathan fell back on to the sofa and put his head in his hands.

‘We have to, I don’t know, change things,’ said Stephen. ‘Make out it was self-defence. Or suicide.’

‘He ran himself through with his own sword? In the back?’ I said.

‘All right, all right. I know,’ said Stephen. ‘But Nathan didn’t mean to kill him. And he thought he was saving my life. Unless we do something, we all do something...’ A pointed look at Tony. ‘... Nathan will spend the rest of his life in a French prison. They might even hang him. That’s not fair. It’s not just.’

‘I appreciate the thought, Stephen, but what can we say?’ said Nathan, distraught.

Although I had drunk an awful lot of champagne, my brain cleared. I came to a decision; someone had to.

‘We all went back to our rooms,’ I said. ‘Alden stayed up here, drinking. Someone broke in. A burglar. Alden surprised him. There was a fight and Alden was killed. The burglar ran away.’

There was silence.

‘Will that work?’ said Nathan.

‘Yes,’ said Stephen. ‘It’s brilliant!’

‘But we all need to go along with it,’ I said. I stared at Tony, Alden’s best friend. If there was a weak link, it was Tony.

Tony looked at his friend, lying dead on the floor. He looked at Nathan. He sighed. A tear appeared on his cheek and he wiped it away.

‘It was an accident,’ he said. ‘It was your fault, Stephen, for playing with those swords, and Alden’s for playing too seriously. But no one really meant to kill anyone.’ He stared at Nathan. ‘Stephen’s right; you will go to gaol and you don’t deserve that. So, I’ll go along with it.’

‘Thank you, Tony,’ said Nathan.

‘What about Madeleine?’ said Sophie. ‘We have to tell Madeleine.’

My brain was working fast now, very fast, and I had already thought of that. ‘We can’t tell Madeleine. She needs to discover it herself; that way her reaction will be genuine. Credible.’

‘I can’t lie to my sister about this,’ said Sophie. ‘She is Alden’s wife. She must know what happened.’

Sophie was right. They were all looking at me. ‘Yes, you have to tell her, but not right away. Tell her, I don’t know, in a day or so. After the initial questioning, but before the police investigation is closed. Make it her choice. She decides whether Nathan goes to gaol or not. That’s only fair.’

Nathan swallowed and nodded. But he was very pale; he looked as if he was about to be sick.

‘If she decides that we should tell the police Nathan killed him, won’t we be in trouble for lying to them?’ Tony asked.

‘We might,’ I said. ‘But if it’s we who tell them, not Madeleine, I don’t think that’s likely. You’re right, though, it is a risk we are taking.’

I looked around the group. They were silent, thoughtful. They almost looked sober.

I turned to Sophie. ‘I hope you will persuade your sister that she should go along with the rest of us.’

‘I think we should go to the police,’ she said. ‘We should explain what happened. That it was an accident.’

‘If you believe Nathan should spend the rest of his life in prison, then you should tell them,’ I said. ‘If you are not certain of that, then leave it to Madeleine to decide.’

Sophie closed her eyes. ‘We still use the guillotine in France.’

I had assumed that with the extenuating circumstances, they wouldn’t execute Nathan, but I didn’t know what the French judicial system would decide. I could only guess.

‘Well, Sophie?’

She took a deep breath. ‘All right. So what do we do?’

‘OK,’ I said. ‘I will organize this. The story for the rest of you needs to be very simple so you don’t contradict each other.’ I checked my watch. ‘It’s now a quarter to twelve. I have just said I am going to bed. You all agree. But you all leave before me — you can’t remember in what order. So it’s just me and Alden here when you go. That’s all you need to know. Everything, do you understand? And everyone get up late tomorrow.’

‘Who will discover Alden’s body?’

‘That’s not your concern,’ I said. ‘You’ll find out tomorrow.’

‘What about Madeleine?’ Sophie said.

‘She will find out too,’ I replied.

‘But she will know Alden didn’t come to bed with her.’

Damn. Sophie was right. I hadn’t thought of that. How could I hope to think of everything? I could only try.

‘That’s true. But don’t worry about it. Just go to bed, everyone.’

Elaine stood up, wiped her tears, and headed out of the door. Tony stared at his friend, hesitated, glanced at me and followed her, as did the others. Soon I was alone in the room with Alden.

First I felt for a pulse. There definitely wasn’t one. Alden was definitely dead.

For a moment the enormity of what had happened almost overwhelmed me; that a man had been killed right in front of me. But I crammed a lid on those feelings. I sat down on the sofa and forced myself to think. I thought hard and I thought quickly.

I had never been involved in a real-life murder, or indeed had any dealings with the police, although I had read three or four Agatha Christies, a Dashiell Hammett and a Maigret. That would have to do.

So what was involved in a detective investigation? Motive? Alden’s friends had none, the unnamed burglar did. Good. Interviews. Everyone had a simple story; I would need to think through mine. Alibis? In a way, we all had alibis for each other, until the moment we all went to bed. But the police might believe that any one of us could have sneaked back and killed Nathan. Not much I could do about that. Time of death? Middle of the night. Discovery of the body? Ideally, the French couple, when they woke up to make breakfast and tidy up. Possibly Madeleine, if she got up to look for Alden in the middle of the night. She might assume he decided to sleep elsewhere. Signs of a break-in? Footprints? Fingerprints? List of stolen property? Anyone hear anything in the night?

With the questions came answers thick and fast, but I forced myself to sit tight and think things through. Then I went to work.

The house was woken at a few minutes after seven by a scream from Madame Lemoine, who had discovered Alden Burns’s body in the drawing room, with a sword sticking out of his back. The police were called. The investigation, led by an Inspector Pasquier, established that Alden had last been seen by me at about midnight. The others had all gone to bed, and I had left Alden a few minutes later, finishing a bottle of champagne alone in the drawing room.

A window was broken, and earth from the flower beds was scattered underneath it, although outside in the beds themselves footprints were scuffed; the ground was hard from several days without rain. Alden’s wallet was missing, as was a small medieval silver goblet that Madame Lemoine said had stood on top of a chest next to the window. The hilt of the sword in Alden’s back had been wiped clean of fingerprints. Another sword lay on the floor by his body, this one sporting Alden’s own prints. The room itself was full of prints, but these could all be matched with the house guests. The area around the window had been wiped clean.

No one had heard anything, apart from me, who told the police I had heard a whisper in French outside in the garden in the middle of the night. I wasn’t sure of the time, but I guessed it was quite soon after I had gone to sleep. To my regret, I did not investigate. Mme Burns had heard nothing. She too had woken up in the middle of the night — she didn’t know what time — to find the space next to her in bed empty. She had argued with her husband earlier in the evening, and assumed that either he had stayed up all night drinking, or he had fallen asleep on the sofa. No one in the street leading up to the house had seen anything. Local suspects had been interviewed with no result. But since it was the weekend of the Grand Prix de Deauville, the town was a magnet for thieves from far and wide.

The investigation continued. For a day or so, Inspector Pasquier considered the possibility that Madame Burns had murdered her husband. He had been unfaithful to her, and she was very angry about it. But the inspector knew that such a quotidian situation was not proof in and of itself of murder. His instinct told him strongly that she was innocent and no evidence emerged to suggest otherwise.

So, after three days, the houseguests were allowed to return to Paris and to England. Then there was a breakthrough: a known burglar from Paris was discovered to have been at Deauville for the races. He was interviewed and his alibi was weak, drinking with fellow riff-raff in bar in town. But he was a pro. He denied all knowledge of the murder and despite all Inspector Pasquier’s stratagems, he made no slip-ups. Eventually the inspector had to let him go. The investigation continued for several weeks but was then reluctantly closed. Reluctantly, because the inspector was still convinced that the Parisian burglar was his man.

Alden Burns’s murder remained unsolved.

5

Monday 15 March 1999, Wyvis

Clémence closed the book, marking her place with the flap of the dust jacket. The killing of Alden had shocked her. It wasn’t just its suddenness, or the fact that it was the dreadful consequence of a bunch of students her age having too much fun. Nor was it only that they had colluded to hide the truth from the police, and that amongst those who had colluded were her grandfather, her grandmother and the man sitting opposite her. She had been expecting, dreading, a different death. That would come, she was sure, but there was a long way to go yet.

The old man was staring at her under those bushy eyebrows, his chin resting on one hand, in total concentration.

‘Well?’ she said.

He didn’t answer.

She pressed. ‘Do you remember any of that?’

‘I do,’ said the old man. ‘I remember that afternoon in Honfleur when I met Sophie. I remember the train coming out of Calais. And then...’

‘What?’

The old man just shook his head.

‘Do you remember Nathan killing his uncle?’

‘No. I don’t,’ said the old man. ‘I don’t remember Alden at all.’

‘What about Nathan? And Stephen, my grandfather?’

‘Almost.’

‘Almost?’ said Clémence in frustration. ‘How can you almost remember something?’

The old man wrinkled his brows in concentration, ignoring Clémence’s irritation. ‘It’s as if you are looking into a room, which you know is full of people, but there are blank spaces where the people should be. You know they are there, you know you know them, but you can’t see them, and just for the moment you can’t remember who they are. It’s most odd. Do you think it’s true? About Alden? It can’t be, can it?’

He looked at her, his brown eyes vulnerable, seeking assurance. Clémence was not in the mood to give assurance to her grandmother’s murderer.

‘I think it probably is. When Aunt Madeleine gets here, I’ll ask her. She should know; she was there. But until then, we can assume it is true: you and your friends covered up a murder.’

‘Manslaughter, surely? It sounded like an accident.’

‘Whatever.’ A man had died. Clémence agreed with Sophie: they should have come clean to the police. She was disappointed that Sophie hadn’t stood her ground. ‘Can you remember what happens next?’

The old man shook his head. ‘No. No, I can’t. You know yesterday I was sure there was something bad I didn’t want to remember? Killing Alden must have been it.’

He looked relieved as he spoke. The old man’s part in Alden’s killing was bad, but not the stuff of eternal shame.

Not like strangling another man’s wife.

‘I’ll make lunch,’ said Clémence.

‘Shall I help?’ said the old man.

‘No. You stay here,’ said Clémence sharply. ‘I’ll give you a shout when it’s ready.’

She went into the kitchen, put some soup on the hob, and dug some Brie out of the fridge.

She was revolted by Alastair. The bones of what had happened were already clear. He had fallen in love with Sophie when they had first met. But then she had married someone else, her grandfather Stephen, and some time later Angus/Alastair had strangled her. She wasn’t sure exactly when her grandmother had died, but it was obviously after her father was born, and she knew that was 1948.

So what now?

She felt like getting into Livvie’s Clio and just driving off, leaving the old man to his own devices. He could probably survive until Aunt Madeleine arrived. And he could read the damn book himself and find out what an evil monster he really was.

And yet. While Clémence often visited her French mother’s family in Rheims, she knew virtually nothing about her family on her father’s side. Apart from a couple of visits on her way to boarding school, she had been kept away from her grandfather Stephen. She was aware there were cousins — children of her father’s sister whose name she thought was Beatrice — but she had never met them. She got the impression that Stephen’s family had once been wealthy, with an estate in England and one in Scotland as well, but the feckless Stephen had frittered it all away. She was vaguely aware that Stephen himself had been briefly famous as an actor in the forties, but now nobody had heard of him, and according to her mother his films weren’t any good anyway. Then there had been some kind of scandal: her mother muttered darkly about drink. Her father said nothing at all.

There was Aunt Madeleine, her fairy godmother, and Uncle Nathan, whom she occasionally saw, and of course that framed black-and-white photograph of her beautiful grandmother Sophie. And that was it.

No one had told her the truth about her grandmother’s death. They hadn’t even told her Alden Burns existed, let alone he had been killed and they had all connived at covering it up. Who might have told her? Grandpa? She didn’t have that kind of relationship with him. Her father? He never spoke about his own family. Aunt Madeleine? Clémence certainly had some questions for Aunt Madeleine now.

Because now she wanted to find out more. She needed to find out more. Without the knowledge of what had happened back then, her family didn’t make sense. And that meant she didn’t make sense. There was so much she had never questioned: how her grandmother had died, why her grandfather was a broken-down old man. Why her father had dropped out and gone to Morocco when he was in his early twenties.

And all that determined who she was. Half-French, half-English, living in Hong Kong, educated in Britain, with parents who had never really got the hippie out of their systems. Or at least her father hadn’t. He was ten years older than her mother, and although he had eventually become a career teacher at a private school in Hong Kong, he had never reconciled himself to his own father. And then he had walked out on his wife and daughter, and left the island to get a job in Vietnam. After a few months, Clémence’s mother had moved into a nice apartment in Mid-Levels with an Australian fund manager called Patrick. It was only recently that Clémence had begun to suspect that Patrick was the cause, not the result, of her father’s departure.

It was why last Christmas had been so horrible. Why she never wanted to go back to Hong Kong. Ever.

All this, everything that had happened to her in her first twenty years, had causes, had roots.

Those roots were in that book. And Dr Alastair Cunningham, of whom she had barely heard, and whom she had met only once before, knew about them. More than that, he had had an active part in planting them.

Despite herself, part of her couldn’t bring herself to abandon him, at least until she was absolutely sure what he had done. Those brown eyes, firm, intelligent, yet vulnerable tugged at her. He needed her help. Clémence liked it when people needed her help.

She heard the old man make his way up the steep spiral stairs to his room. The soup was bubbling, so she turned the gas down. A car came up the drive to the cottage, a Suzuki four-wheel-drive. A very tall woman with broad shoulders, long legs in tight blue jeans and short blond hair got out and waved to Clémence through the kitchen window.

Clémence opened the front door.

‘Hi, I’m Sheila,’ said the woman. ‘Sheila MacInnes.’ She held out her hand, and Clémence shook it briefly. The voice was soft and friendly and very Scottish. For some reason, Clémence had expected someone much smaller and a little older — Sheila was about forty, she guessed.

‘Oh, hi, come in. I’m just making some lunch. Do you want some?’

‘Och, no. I’ll pop back in later, if you like?’

‘No, no, no,’ said Clémence. ‘Please stay. It’s only soup, it can wait. I’ll turn it off for now. Have a coffee.’

‘That would be very nice. I’m so sorry I wasn’t here last night. My mother’s poorly and she lives all the way over in Ullapool, I had to check on her. How’s Dr Cunningham? Is he here?’

‘Oh, yes. He’s upstairs. I can call him if you like. But actually it would be nice if I could ask you a couple of things first.’

‘Of course, pet. How is he?’

‘Physically, he’s not bad at all,’ Clémence said, putting the kettle on. ‘Mentally he’s quite sharp. And he seems to know his way around the cottage. But he can remember next to nothing about his life.’

‘Aye, I know. It’s right weird. But at least he’s still alive. When I found him, I thought he was a goner, if you see what I mean.’ She shuddered. ‘He was right at the bottom of those stairs. They’re very steep, you tell him to watch himself on them. He was out cold, and there was a pool of blood by his head. You can still see a wee patch on the floorboards; I couldn’t get rid of it no matter how much I scrubbed.’

‘Can you tell me anything about him?’ Clémence said. ‘Did you speak to him at all? Before the accident.’

‘Aye, I did,’ the woman laughed. ‘But I suppose I did most of the talking. That’s the way it is with me, if you see what I mean. But he told me a wee bit about himself.’

‘How long had he been here?’

‘He wrote to me last year asking about renting the cottage for the winter. Usually, that would have been a problem, but we’ve had some difficulties with the owners recently, so it made sense. And when I spoke to him on the phone, he sounded awful nice. He had just come back to England from Australia. He was staying in a hotel somewhere in Yorkshire, but decided he wanted somewhere a bit more remote.’

‘Did he say he had been here before?’

‘Aye, he did. Just the once and that was a long time ago. He was very curious about the estate. I told him what I could — Terry and I only came here ten years ago. We are both from Ullapool, Terry was a stalker at an estate over there.’

‘Who owns the Wyvis Estate?’

‘A Dutchman, Mr de Bruijn. He’s a lovely man, but he’s getting old, too old for the stalking. He used to come for months at a time, and bring lots of his friends with him, but we hardly see him now. That’s why we rented out this cottage and Corravachie down by the loch. You might have passed it on the way up?’

Clémence remembered the smoke she had seen rising up from the white building on a spit of land.

‘What about the big house at the head of the lake?’

‘That’s Wyvis Lodge, where Mr de Bruijn lives when he comes. We’re thinking about renting that out as well. We should get a fair wee bit for it. But it’s empty at the moment. I keep it clean and we make sure the grounds are tidy.’

The kettle boiled and Clémence spooned instant coffee into cups. ‘Thanks for getting the food and coffee,’ she said.

‘Och, it’s no bother. I’m glad you could come and look after him.’

They sat down opposite each other at the kitchen table. Clémence noticed that Sheila had a small tattoo of a Chinese character under her T-shirt by her collar bone, though it was not one of the few that Clémence recognized. Clémence liked her: she seemed competent and willing, and Clémence might need her help in the next few days.

‘This may sound odd, but did a family called Trickett-Smith ever own the estate?’

‘Yes, they did. Dr Cunningham asked all about them. But they sold up in the nineteen seventies.’

‘That was my grandfather’s family,’ said Clémence. ‘I thought I had heard it mentioned.’

‘A hundred years ago the estate was bought by a man who owned a big furniture store in London. Bought it for the deer stalking, of course. Then the Trickett-Smiths owned it, and then a German and now Mr de Bruijn. Mind you, the local history society says that a couple of hundred years ago, there were dozens of Scottish families up here farming. Before the clearances.’

‘The clearances?’ Clémence had a feeling she had vaguely heard of them. She feared they were bad.

‘Aye. When the rich landowners turfed out all the folk because you could make more money out the sheep than out the crofters.’

She was right; it was bad. ‘Oh,’ she said.

Sheila smiled. ‘That was a wee while ago. And we can hardly complain. Terry’s job needs people who want to spend a lot of money stalking deer, if you see what I mean.’

Clémence had yet to see a deer at Wyvis. She assumed stalking meant sneaking up on them and shooting them. Memories of the Bambi video she had watched over and over again as a kid flooded back; it was scary and it was sad. But she decided not to make any comment.

‘Have you ever heard of a book called Death At Wyvis?’ she asked.

‘Aye, I think there’s a copy in Dr Cunningham’s study. It’s an old book.’

‘Have you ever read it?’

‘No, pet. But I know some of the locals around here did when it came out. I think it’s about a murder.’

‘I think it is,’ said Clémence. ‘I have started to read it to Dr Cunningham. Do you know if it’s true?’

‘Well, I can’t be sure, because I haven’t read it, see, but there was a murder just down the loch thirty years ago, something like that. A woman was found, drowned, I think.’

‘Did they find who did it?’ Clémence asked. She realized she was holding her breath as she waited for an answer.

Sheila thought for a moment. ‘I can’t just mind, if I ever knew. The old stalker’s wife still lives in Dingwall, Pauline Ferguson. You could ask her.’

‘Maybe I will,’ said Clémence.

Just then she heard the sound of slow, uneven footsteps on the stairs.

‘Dr Cunningham!’ Sheila exclaimed as the old man entered the kitchen. ‘It’s lovely to see you out the hospital, pet.’

The old man smiled. It was clear that he recognized her, but then Clémence realized that she had probably visited him in hospital.

Sheila fussed over him for a few minutes and then left them to the soup, promising to pop in again at least once a day to make sure they were all right.

Clémence was alone again with her grandmother’s killer.

6

They ate lunch. Clémence wasn’t in the mood to talk, unlike the old man.

‘Nice woman, Mrs MacInnes,’ he said. ‘I’m damned lucky she found me. At the hospital they said I might have died of hypothermia.’

Clémence grunted. She was tempted to say that she wished he had, but she couldn’t quite go that far.

‘You read very well.’

‘I like reading out loud,’ Clémence said.

‘Even to an old fool who can’t remember his name?’

‘Even to you.’ She winced inwardly: that sounded ruder than she had meant it. But the old man didn’t seem to mind.

‘Were you impressed by my chat-up lines?’

‘Not especially.’

‘Medieval land reform doesn’t do it for you, eh?’ The old man chuckled to himself. ‘Sophie must have been very patient. I sounded so young, don’t you think? Your friends aren’t that innocent, are they?’

‘I don’t think many of them have been to Parisian brothels. At least I like to think they haven’t.’

‘That’s a point. I’m curious to hear what happens next, aren’t you?’

‘Yes,’ said Clémence, as unenthusiastically as possible, although in truth she was curious. At last, her terse replies had the desired effect: the old man gave up and they ate the rest of the meal in silence. But just as she was clearing the soup bowls, he grabbed her hand.

She tugged it away from him.

‘No. Let me look. At that mark.’

She knew immediately what he meant. The ragged red spot on her wrist. Reluctantly, she offered him her hand.

His fingers were firm as he examined it. ‘You should get that checked,’ the old man said. ‘Soon. And while they are at it, get them to check the rest of your skin.’

‘Is it skin cancer?’

‘Almost certainly,’ the old man said. She felt a jolt run through her body. His eyes met hers. Strong. Comforting. ‘Don’t worry, it’s basal cell carcinoma, the least serious, and we’ve caught it early. It’s practically harmless. But it will need to be cut out.’

‘Are you sure it’s not going to kill me?’ she said.

‘I’ve seen hundreds of these in Australia,’ he said.

Clémence raised her eyebrows. ‘You remember Australia?’

The old man smiled. ‘I don’t know how, but I do know I have seen them before. You said you lived in Hong Kong. Have you spent a lot of time out in the sun?’

‘Yes. When I was little we lived in Morocco and then Vietnam. Maman tried to put sun cream on me, but she didn’t do a very good job.’

‘Did you burn?’

Clémence remembered wriggling in her sheets when she was small, her shoulders itching. ‘Yes. I did.’ She looked at the old man in panic. ‘Will I get more of these?’

‘Probably, in time,’ he said. ‘Just be very careful from now on with the sunscreen.’

He patted her wrist and let go of it. ‘Don’t worry. But make an appointment as soon as you can. You’ll be OK.’

Clémence wanted to believe him. It was only a tiny spot. She would be OK. ‘You are sure it won’t spread?’

‘Quite sure.’

She took a deep breath and cleared the rest of the table. The old man moved to help her with the little bit of washing up.

She couldn’t stand him hovering over her shoulder. She felt a sudden urge to leave the cottage. ‘Look. I’m going out for a walk. When I get back, we’ll read some more of the book.’ It was a command, not a suggestion.

The old man nodded. ‘All right. I’ll see you later.’

The sky was blue and the sun had some warmth to it. The snow had completely melted off the branches of the trees, and was slipping away from the heather. It almost felt warm, although the temperature was certainly below ten degrees.

She walked down the path through the woods and soon reached the loch. She headed along the shore towards the Stalker’s Lodge.

The loch was a dark Prussian blue in the sunshine. Two swans drifted across its surface. She wondered if you could tell how deep it was just by looking at it. It seemed to her that it must be very deep. Was there a Loch Glass monster down there?

Was there a monster in the cottage?

He was just an old man. Whatever he had done had been done decades ago when he was younger, a different person. Was he a different person? She didn’t know. He didn’t even know. Why hadn’t Aunt Madeleine told her about this?

She was alone in an isolated cottage with a murderer. Should she be frightened? The old man was in his eighties, but he was still a couple of inches taller than her. He had a stoop, but his shoulders were square and he was fit. She had no idea whether she could overcome him in a fight. Or he might take her unawares — there were knives in the kitchen.

But she just wasn’t scared of him. Those soft brown vulnerable eyes. She felt safe with him — not just safe from him, but protected. She was supposed to be looking after him, but despite his age, she also felt he was looking after her. She was still angry with him, though.

She broke out of the woods. Above her skylarks were twittering away, fluttering vertically up into the sky and then diving down again into the snow-patched heather.

The white tops of Ben Wyvis soared high above her. But there was a ridge about halfway up, and she thought she saw some movement on the skyline. She stopped and stared. Yes! A deer, silhouetted against the snowy slopes above. And another, grazing. And then one of them lifted its head and she could see the antlers. They were a long way away, but it was a magnificent sight.

She walked on, fast, relishing the exercise and the fresh air. She rounded the curve of the loch and the white cottage on the spit of land came into view. Once again, smoke rose in a twisted column from the chimney. A new blue Peugeot was parked on a gravel apron by the front door.

As she approached along the track, she thought she heard music: a guitar and some singing. A man in a blue parka was sitting on a stone right on the shore of the loch, holding a guitar and staring out at the rocky wall opposite.

Clémence hesitated and then approached. The man knew what he was doing. The voice had a kind of gravelly clarity. She was only a few feet away from the figure and she stopped. He hadn’t noticed her, but she didn’t want to interrupt him, partly because it was rude, and partly because she wanted to hear the rest of the song, which she didn’t recognize.

But then he stopped mid verse, and stared at his guitar, thoughtfully.

She coughed.

The man whipped round. He was thin, tall with a short neat grey beard, very short grey hair and blue eyes surrounded by crows’ feet.

‘Whoa! You scared me!’ he said. ‘This isn’t the kind of place you expect an audience.’

‘Well you’ve got one,’ said Clémence. ‘So don’t let me stop you. Play something else.’

He shrugged. ‘OK.’ He started playing a few chords that Clémence instantly recognized: ‘My Woman Wept For Me’, a folk song from the seventies by Don Ahern. He played it more slowly than she remembered it.

She perched on the other end of the rock a few feet away from him and listened. The music, and the loch, and the sunshine on her face, and the cool crisp air, made her heart sing. Clémence wasn’t good at being grumpy. This was just what she needed.

‘That was lovely,’ she said, when the man had finished.

‘You recognize it?’ the man said. He had an American accent.

‘My parents played it all the time. It reminds me of growing up.’

The man smiled and nodded to himself, clearly pleased.

An absurd thought hit Clémence. ‘You’re not Don Hellerman?’ From what she could remember of Don Hellerman he was small with long dark curly hair, but maybe she had got that wrong.

‘Don died ten years ago,’ said the man. ‘But I did write this song.’

‘Wow!’ said Clémence. ‘Are you really famous?’

The man chuckled. ‘No, sadly not. Don’s producer heard me play it in 1971 and contacted me a year later, asking me if Don could use it. I guess he did a better job. But I still prefer it my way.’

‘Have you written any other hits?’ Clémence asked.

‘A few near misses, a bunch of advertising jingles, but that’s the only one. So far. That’s why I came here. I live in California, but I needed to get away to try something new. Way way away.’ He leaned over towards her and held out his hand. ‘Jerry. Jerry Ranger.’

‘Clémence Smith,’ said Clémence shaking it.

‘Are you staying up at Culzie?’

‘Yes. I’m looking after Dr Cunningham.’

‘Is he OK? Sheila told me he had taken a tumble.’

‘I think he’s OK. But he’s lost his memory. It’s the weirdest thing, amnesia.’

‘He can’t remember anything?’

‘Absolutely nothing. Or nothing important. He couldn’t remember who he is, they had to tell him. That’s part of what I am doing. Most of it. Trying to jog his memory.’

‘Is it working?’ Jerry asked.

‘I think so. Slowly.’

‘Well, tell him I wish him a quick recovery,’ said Jerry. ‘I’ve been here for three weeks now; we’ve spoken a few times, had a couple of drinks together. Nice guy, once you get to talk to him.’

‘I will tell him, if you like, but I doubt very much if he will remember who you are.’

‘Oh, yes, of course,’ said Jerry. He frowned. ‘That’s a shame.’

‘Do you want to drop by and help me?’ Clémence asked. ‘He might remember something more easily that’s more recent. And I don’t know very much about his past, which makes it difficult.’

‘Neither do I,’ said Jerry. ‘Although he did talk about Australia some. He used to live in the hills near Perth before he came here. And he did some stuff with eagles there, capturing them and counting them. He got all excited about the pair of golden eagles up the other end of the loch. They nest in the cliffs of Meall Mòr.’ He smiled at Clémence. ‘But sure, I’ll drop by.’

‘Great,’ Clémence said. ‘Play something else. And then I had better get back.’

She had been away nearly two hours by the time she returned to the cottage. The old man was out — he must have gone for his own walk. This troubled Clémence; she wasn’t sure whether he was fit enough to go out on his own. She considered looking for him, but then she decided to take advantage of his absence to make some phone calls first.

She called Callum on his mobile. He sounded as pleased to hear her voice as she was to hear his.

‘Hey, Clemmie, how are you?’

‘I’m OK, I suppose, but the weirdest thing is happening here. Tell me if I sound mental, but I’ve found this book in the old guy’s house. I think he killed my grandmother!’

She explained it all to Callum, who listened carefully. ‘Are you sure you should be there with him alone?’ Callum asked when she had finished.

‘Yeah, it’s OK. He doesn’t seem dangerous, and my aunt wouldn’t let me stay here if it was a problem.’

‘I don’t know, Clemmie,’ said Callum.

That pulled Clémence up a bit. Callum might be a year younger than her, but he was one of the most sensible guys she knew. If he was worried, maybe she should be.

‘I’m sure I’ll be OK,’ she said. Then she had an idea. ‘Do you want to come here and keep me company?’

‘Maybe I should. I am a bit worried about you.’

Clémence’s heart leaped. They hadn’t been going out very long, but Clémence really really liked him, and what was cool was the more she got to know him, the more that liking grew. She had the strong impression he felt the same way about her.

‘It’s beautiful up here. You could bring your bike — there’s a good track beside the loch. Maybe you could take it on the train and ride it up here? Or I could pick you up in Livvie’s car, although I don’t think we could fit the bike in the boot.’

‘Thinking about it, I’d better not,’ said Callum. ‘I’ve only just started at the pub, and I can’t take shifts off right away. Plus I need the money.’

‘I understand,’ said Clémence. She was disappointed, but on the other hand she was pleased with his concern, and she could tell from his voice that he genuinely wanted to come. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow.’

‘Look after yourself, Clemmie.’

‘I will.’

Next was Aunt Madeleine in New York. Her phone was answered on the fourth ring by a woman with a Hispanic accent, a maid presumably. She said that Mrs Giannelli had said that Clémence might call and that Mrs Giannelli expected to be in Scotland the following day. She was flying to Heathrow overnight and then to Edinburgh and taking a train from there to Dingwall. She would get a taxi to Dr Cunningham’s address.

All this was clearly read out from a note left by Aunt Madeleine, and that was all the maid knew.

Clémence was frustrated she couldn’t ask Aunt Madeleine the questions she wanted right away, but there was only twenty-four hours to wait.

In the meantime there was one more person she could call.

7

Stephen paused for breath as he made his way up Campden Hill. Either the hill was getting steeper or he was getting older. What had a few years before been a pleasant twenty-minute stroll to the pub from his flat, was now a major excursion.

He was getting older.

But at least his pint of Guinness would taste good when he eventually got there.

And it did. The Windsor Castle was an old pub split into a number of bars by wooden screens. The smallest, the Sherry Bar, was his favourite, and he usually got there early enough to grab his favourite seat. Maitland, a tiny crooked man who looked ninety, but who was in fact only seventy-seven, was already there with the Telegraph crossword open in front of him.

‘How many have you done?’ Stephen asked.

‘Four. It’s tricky today.’

Stephen eased himself onto the wooden bench with a harrumph, and took his second sip of Guinness. A small sip. The pint, and the crossword, would last him a couple of hours.

‘Give me one.’

‘“Solution given by Italian who made notes before court.” Seven letters.’

‘Ah.’

Although they usually finished their pints, Stephen and Maitland never finished the crossword. That was the point.

His ruminations were interrupted by Harry, a recently retired stockbroker, who really needed to find himself another pub. Preferably in Woking or Weybridge or somewhere.

‘Morning, gents,’ he said, setting his gin and tonic in front of him. ‘Lovely day.’ He beamed at them from a face of flab and sweat.

Maitland grunted. Stephen ignored him. ‘“Made notes”. Music, do you think?’

‘Doing the crossword?’ Harry said.

Of course they were bloody doing the crossword. Just like they did every day.

‘You two are like the furniture in here,’ Harry said. ‘How long have you been coming here? Doing the crossword together?’

‘1962 we did our first one, don’t you think, Stephen?’ Maitland answered.

Stephen nodded. ‘That sounds about right.’

‘But not here,’ said Maitland. ‘Somewhere else.’

‘Did you work together?’ asked Harry.

‘No.’

‘Old school friends?’

Stephen glanced at Maitland. This man had to be dealt with. ‘Cell mates.’

Harry laughed. ‘Shared an office, eh? Or was it National Service?’

‘Wormwood Scrubs.’

‘Ah.’ Harry sipped his drink uncomfortably.

Stephen waited. Anyone with any decency would let it rest there. But Harry...

‘What were you in for, if you don’t mind me asking?’

Actually Stephen did mind.

‘Murder,’ said Stephen.

‘Murder,’ said Maitland.

‘You’re kidding, right?’ said Henry. He tugged at his double chin nervously. ‘You’re not kidding.’

‘They let us out when they thought we were no longer a threat to society,’ said Stephen. ‘But you know what?’ He leaned forward.

‘What?’ said Harry, distinctly uneasy now.

‘When you’ve killed once, you can always kill again.’

The retired stockbroker drained his glass and left the pub, knocking the table and spilling Stephen’s Guinness on the way.

Stephen glanced at Maitland. One side of his friend’s lip twitched. Then he returned to business. ‘An Italian musical instrument. Piccolo?’

Two hours later, Stephen made the trek back to his flat just on the other side of Notting Hill Gate. He wanted to catch the three-thirty at Newmarket on Channel 4. He had enjoyed dealing with Harry. He and Maitland were a good team. He was a good man, Maitland, even if he had murdered his wife with a cricket bat.

Stephen lived in a tiny basement flat bought for him twenty years before by his sister-in-law for fifteen thousand pounds. The other people in the building were yuppie bankers and solicitors, who had paid twenty times that for theirs. The flat was dark and it was a tip; but Stephen knew where everything was, and he liked it.

He was bursting, so he dived into the lavatory as soon as he got in the front door.

He had just finished when the phone rang.

‘All right, all right,’ he muttered to himself. Why people bothered him like that, he would never know.

He picked up the receiver. ‘Yes.’

‘Grandpa?’ It was a woman’s voice, a young woman.

‘I think you’ve got the wrong number.’ Stephen did have a few grandchildren, but they never wanted to speak to him. More to the point, he didn’t want to speak to them.

‘Is that Mr Trickett-Smith?’

‘Yes,’ Stephen admitted.

‘It’s Clémence. Your granddaughter.’

It was true, Clémence was his granddaughter. Rupert’s girl. Although Stephen had hardly ever seen her.

‘Are you telephoning from Hong Kong?’

‘No. Scotland. I go to St Andrews University. You know that.’

‘Yes, yes of course,’ he said, relieved that she wasn’t in London and about to take him out to tea. Although actually from what he remembered of her, he rather liked Clémence.

‘But I’m at Wyvis now. Looking after Dr Cunningham. Alastair Cunningham? Your old friend.’

‘Wyvis? Alastair?’ Stephen had been standing holding the telephone receiver, but now he slumped into an armchair.

‘Yes. He fell down the stairs last week and hit his head. Badly. They took him to hospital, but now they’ve let him out and Aunt Madeleine asked me to look after him until she gets over here.’

Interfering old bat.

Clémence was in full flow. ‘Alastair has suffered a brain injury and has forgotten everything, so I am trying to help him remember. Was Wyvis the Scottish estate that was in our family?’

‘Yes,’ said Stephen. ‘We had to sell it in the seventies when my father died. Death duties.’

‘I thought so,’ said Clémence. ‘Alastair’s been living in a cottage called Culzie. I found a book in there, which I have been reading to him. Death At Wyvis. Have you read it?’

‘Yes, I’ve read it,’ said Stephen.

‘We’ve only done a few chapters, but it starts with Alastair killing my grandmother, Sophie. The author calls the protagonist Angus, but it’s definitely Alastair, isn’t it?’

‘I remember the beginning,’ said Stephen.

‘Well, is it true?’

‘Why do you ask?’

‘What do you mean, why do I ask?’ said Clémence. She was beginning to sound angry now. ‘My grandmother was murdered, and no one told me. This old man killed her and Aunt Madeleine makes me stay with him. I want to know what’s going on!’

‘Listen to me, young lady,’ said Stephen. ‘There are very good reasons why no one told you what happened to Sophie. It’s a bad idea to read that book. If you ask me, Alastair is lucky he has forgotten some things. Put that book back on the bookshelf and leave it alone. Better still, throw it in the loch where it belongs.’

‘Grandpa!’

‘Now I have something to watch on television. Goodbye, Clémence.’

Stephen put the receiver down. His eyes were drawn to the mantelpiece above the fire, and the photograph of Sophie aged twenty-four, looking at him over her right shoulder, with that quiet smile. By the time he switched on the television he had missed the three-thirty race. And the four o’clock.

It was good to be out in the open, walking again. The old man had listened to the lecture from Dr Stenhouse in the hospital about making sure he got both his mind and his body going again. So he had left the cottage and let his feet take him where they wanted. They led him on to a rough path out of the woods and on to the hillside of heather, dead bracken and peat bog, with Ben Wyvis rising to his left and Loch Glass beneath him on his right. The path made its way diagonally down the hill to the loch, just by Wyvis Lodge.

He couldn’t see any deer, but as he scanned the sky, he spotted a large bird wheeling above the stand of pines near the Lodge. It was too close to see its colouration, but he could tell from the splayed ‘fingers’ at its wingtips that it was a golden eagle.

He stopped and stared at the magnificent bird. He loved eagles.

And then, suddenly, he remembered another eagle a continent away, several continents away. They were in the outback somewhere in WA, three hundred kilometres from Perth. Him and Mike. Mike was a young guy, in his thirties, Alastair’s next-door neighbour. He was studying wedge-tailed eagles. He needed to trap them to tag them, and that was very difficult. He and Alastair had discussed the problem one evening over a beer on Alastair’s veranda, and Alastair had come up with a solution. The eagles were so big that they needed a run-up to take off. So if you built a wire cage, open at the top, which was big enough for them to swoop down into, but did not give them enough space to take off, you might catch one.

Mike had taken Alastair out to try the idea, and it had worked! They had caught a young male. Problem solved! Mike was overjoyed.

Alastair smiled at the memory. Slowly his life was coming back to him.

When he had woken up in hospital, the realization that he didn’t know who he was had scared the hell out of him. As the fuzziness in his brain had receded over the next couple of days, the emptiness that was his life had taken on a kind of awful clarity. Without memory, could there be life? How could he be a person if he didn’t know who he was? What was existence — I forget therefore I’m not? How could he remember Descartes when he couldn’t even recall his own wife’s name?

And then there was the dread. The fear that he didn’t want to remember his life, that his memories would horrify him, terrify him. And if his life was too dreadful to remember, perhaps it hadn’t been worth living? He had been tempted to withdraw, to curl up in a dark cave of forgetfulness.

But Clémence had come and taken him away from the hospital and slowly, slowly he was getting back in control.

He could remember some things clearly. His childhood: the grey stone house on the edge of Pateley Bridge overlooking the River Nidd; Riggs Moor and Fountains Abbey; his mother and father; his little sister Joyce; Porky Bakewell; his boarding school at the head of another dale many miles away; his school friends Greenhalgh and Murray and Simpson Minor; playing rugger; the exhilaration of scoring a try against Ampleforth.

And now he had remembered Sophie at Honfleur, he remembered Wyvis, he remembered the eagles in Australia. With patience and effort more of it would come back. Perhaps he would even remember his wife — Helen they said her name was. It was very odd not to be able to remember your wife. He assumed she was dead; she must be, otherwise he would have heard from her. How had she died? Had he been heartbroken? Would he be heartbroken again when he eventually recalled it? Or maybe he hated her or she hated him — they had divorced after all. Whose fault was that, his or hers?

The dread had receded, thank God. Alden’s death had been bad; they should definitely have reported what had really happened to the police, but it was a long time ago, and he could forgive himself. Especially since it wasn’t actually he who had killed the man.

If he was ever going to break out of this limbo, this half life of half memories, he had to find out more. He had been tempted to pick up the book while Clémence was out and read the next chapter to himself, but he couldn’t find it. She must have hidden it in her room somewhere, and he couldn’t bring himself to search her stuff for it. Anyway, he preferred to read the novel with her. It seemed safer to have her company unearthing these lost memories — he didn’t want to do it alone. And she had a lovely soft voice; she was a good reader.

Something was wrong, though. She had lost her initial friendliness of the day before. She must disapprove of what he had done, what they all had done, with Alden. It was a shame. She was only young, but Alastair didn’t want her disapproval.

He was now down by the loch and Wyvis Lodge. The lodge was large enough for a decent-sized house party. Luxury in the midst of isolation, and all in the name of massacring deer. He turned away and followed the track along the loch. He soon came to a wooden boathouse with a metal roof, which stretched out from the shore on pilings. That he definitely remembered.

Just beyond it, the trees came down to the loch, and a path led up through the woods to Culzie.

He stopped and looked up the boulder-strewn slope, with its twisted grey tree trunks and their tangled branches, fingers in mossy gloves clutching and fidgeting all around him, pointing at him, accusing him. Of what? He was tired, and his right knee was stiffening up. He wasn’t sure he had the energy to get up there.

Suddenly, the dread that had released him from its grip clutched at his chest. He turned to the boathouse.

The memories came crashing over his head, like a tidal wave erupting from the loch. Night. Sophie. An owl. Sophie.

‘No!

‘No, no, no!’

He turned and stumbled up the path, pursued by memories of that other night when he had stumbled up the same path and his life had been changed for ever.

Capri was hell, and I built thick stone walls in a vain attempt to keep the hell out. I was polite to everyone. I smiled. I took refuge in my pipe and my Suetonius, sitting alone for hours staring at the same page, ignoring the view. At first people tried to jolly me up, or engage me in medical conversation, but then they let me be, assuming that I was enjoying the island in my own way. I did a good job of looking thoughtful, rather than miserable. I was aware that Nathan was disappointed in the cooling of our friendship, but I hoped that I gave the impression that I had changed in the couple of years since Oxford. Grown up. Become more introspective.

There was some solace in lengthy discussions with Tony about art. Tony showed me his studio — rotting vegetables on the back alleys of Paris had become rotting vegetables in the narrow streets of Capri town. Tony had become much more serious about his art, but it seemed to me that his paintings were getting worse rather than better. Poor Tony seemed on the verge of panic. I stumbled across a stack of canvases of Parisian refuse, which had been scored out heavily in black paint. Tony saw me examine them and just shrugged. He still professed confidence in the exhibition he was planning in Paris for the following spring.

Madeleine was friendly and hospitable, and I was polite in return. She was clearly very much in love with Nathan, and there was a pleasing equality in the way they treated each other. Nathan seemed to grow in her presence, the nervous ambition he had displayed at Oxford was developing into confidence. More than confidence, power. With his intelligence, his determination, his money and his beautiful wife, Nathan had the conviction and the ability to get what he wanted.

Sophie tried to speak to me a couple of times, but then gave up. I found it impossible to say anything to her.

The hardest, of course, was Stephen. The villa wasn’t very big, and so we were sharing a room. When night came, we didn’t speak; we lay on our backs in the dark, staring at the ceiling, awake. An intermittent glow flared up from Stephen’s bed as he smoked a cigarette.

I was furious. Stephen had always known what an impression Sophie had made on me, how important that day in Honfleur was to me. I knew I had no absolute claim on Sophie; in fact, I remembered with some pain her question about Stephen when we were sitting on the bench by the chapel above Honfleur. But he knew how I felt about her. If there was something going on between him and Sophie, he had had plenty of opportunity to tell me on the drive down through Italy. And he hadn’t. Just some arrogant advice about not raising my expectations.

Silence. The bastard still wasn’t saying anything, lying over there, smoking. But Stephen knew what I was thinking. Stephen knew exactly what I was thinking, how much pain he had caused me.

And how long had it been going on, this whatever-it-was between him and Sophie. Days? Years? Perhaps Stephen had been stopping off in Paris to see her every time he visited his mother in Antibes, and not telling me anything about it.

The anger was like a worm, creeping through every part of my system. I wanted to leap out of bed, jump onto Stephen and ram my fists into his face. He was tall and broad-shouldered, but I had scarcely ever seen him in any physical contact with anyone. He didn’t play sport; he avoided trouble, whereas I let my aggression rip every Saturday on the rugger field. I was well known for my hard tackling — if I crashed into you at full speed, you didn’t get up. I could beat the shit out of Stephen. I should beat the shit out of Stephen.

All right, perhaps I shouldn’t do that. But I should tell him how I felt. How my best friend had betrayed me.

I watched the cigarette glow above his pillow. I knew Stephen knew what I was thinking, yet somehow I couldn’t bring myself to speak it. It was humiliating, too humiliating to admit to aloud. I had fallen for a girl stupid enough to fall for a cad like him; yet fallen so quietly, so feebly, she probably hadn’t even noticed. I was a lot stupider than she.

The anger burned. Even when sleep came eventually, the embers glowed.

Alden was there on Capri too. He joined us for breakfast in the morning; he was with us when we visited the Blue Grotto on a boat hired from the Marina Grande. But he was there as our friend, an uncle who was still benevolent.

We wanted him there as a friend, not as an enemy. He was mentioned in conversation frequently: ‘Alden would adore the grotto — he’d rush out and buy a painting of it right away’; ‘I bet Alden would have bought a villa on Capri if he had ever visited it’; ‘Alden would have loved this limoncello — he was always a sucker for sweet liqueurs.’ This was especially true of Madeleine and Nathan. It was as if by invoking his spirit as part of the group of friends, they were affirming his approval for their marriage. Tony saw him as his supportive patron still and Stephen and Sophie went along with the others, Sophie possibly to support her sister, and Stephen because he was a heartless bastard.

I, alone, didn’t mention Alden’s name. The reason was pretty straightforward really: I felt guilty about helping to kill him.

The murder was only mentioned head-on once, at dinner on the second night. As he was pouring some of the delicious soft caprese wine from the third bottle of the evening, Nathan reminded us of the couple who had been looking after the Deauville villa.

‘I don’t think I told you, but I heard from Monsieur Lemoine a couple of years ago. His wife was getting old and unable to do all the cooking and cleaning that they were used to. They wanted to retire, and buy a small cottage in Pont L’Évêque to be near their daughter and grandchildren. They wondered if I could help them.’

‘Good God!’ said Stephen. ‘That’s blackmail!’

‘It is indeed,’ said Nathan. ‘But very nicely done. No mention of what they had or hadn’t seen. No threat. They were asking for an amount that we could easily afford.’

‘Did you give them the money?’ said Stephen.

‘Yes,’ said Nathan. ‘They were very grateful.’

‘But how can you know whether they really saw anything?’ said Tony.

‘They saw something,’ said Madeleine. ‘Or more probably heard something. It’s just they were cunning enough to keep quiet during the murder investigation. They wouldn’t make a demand like that unless they knew something was amiss.’

‘But they’ll just come back for more,’ said Stephen.

‘They already have,’ said Nathan. ‘Now they live in Pont L’Évêque they need a car. Just a small one.’

‘And you paid them?’ said Tony.

‘Half of what they asked for,’ said Madeleine. ‘Just to stop them from getting too greedy. We can afford it, and it’s worth it.’

‘Since we are all here together now, we just thought we should let the rest of you know what we’ve done,’ said Nathan. ‘It’s the kind of thing you shouldn’t put in a letter.’

There was silence around the table. We were not just friends; we were conspirators.

‘We were lucky,’ said Tony.

‘Very lucky,’ said Stephen.

‘It was all thanks to Angus,’ said Nathan. ‘I don’t know how you thought of so much so quickly. I will always be grateful.’

He raised his glass. ‘To Angus.’

‘To Angus,’ the others repeated.

‘It was nothing,’ I said, looking around the table at my friends with a stiff smile. It was true: with the exception of Elaine I had been the most innocent, the most naïve of the people in the room that night, yet it had been me who had somehow cobbled together a story that held up against all Inspector Pasquier’s probing. And their gratitude seemed sincere, with the exception of Sophie, who looked uncomfortable, as well she might. The others were willing to go along with the fiction that we had dealt sensibly with a ghastly accident. Indeed, it was a lie I had told myself for the last four years to enable me to live with myself. But it was a lie. Nathan had killed Alden and the right thing to do would have been to tell the police.

‘We are not quite all here,’ said Stephen. ‘How is Elaine? Where is she?’

‘She’s a junior at Bryn Mawr,’ said Nathan. ‘Studying French, I believe.’

‘She wrote me that she’s coming over to Europe again next month,’ said Tony. ‘With a friend from college and possibly her aunt as chaperone, although she is trying to lose the aunt. She’s planning to stay here for a week.’

‘She hasn’t said anything about Alden?’ Stephen asked.

‘We’ve never mentioned it,’ said Nathan.

‘I’ll make sure she is OK with it,’ said Tony. ‘But she’s a good kid. She won’t talk.’

From what I had seen of her four years before, Elaine didn’t strike me as a good kid. But she was probably practised at keeping her own misdemeanours quiet.

‘None of us has anything to worry about,’ said Nathan. ‘I guess the French authorities will have something much more important to be concerned about soon. Like the Germans marching over the Maginot Line.’

There then followed a disjointed and ill-informed discussion of likely German and French strategies in a war. But I feared that Nathan was dead wrong when he said that we need not worry about Alden’s death. I suspected we would all be worrying about that for the rest of our lives.

And so we should.

We visited the Villa Jovis on the third day. At breakfast, they all asked me about Tiberius. I described the orgies and torture the emperor was supposed to have indulged in on the island: the teams of sexual performers copulating in triple unions in front of him; the ‘old goat’s garden’ where boys and girls dressed up as Paris and nymphs solicited sex; the paintings and sculptures in his palace and his library of erotica always handy in case guidance was needed on the more complicated techniques. I skimmed over some of the more depraved descriptions involving young boys and babies. Tiberius was a monster, at least according to Suetonius, but I was fascinated by how and why the most powerful man in the world should choose to shut himself up on this island for the last twelve years of his life.

The path up to the palace was steadily uphill, and despite a stiff cool breeze, it was hot work. We shooed off the locals trying to tempt us on to donkeys for the climb. Birds serenaded us from lemon trees and vines along the route. I walked with Tony at the head of the group, who of course knew the route, and with Sophie. After a while, we paused for breath beside a drinking fountain. The Bay of Naples had opened up before us, and behind us was Capri town and the stone ramparts of Monte Solaro.

‘Just over there is the Villa Fersen,’ Tony said, pointing to a path through orchards and vineyards. ‘Baron Fersen was a kind of modern-day Tiberius. His villa is one of the most spectacular on the island.’

‘Did he throw people off cliffs?’ asked Sophie.

‘I don’t think so, but he’s got the right place for it. He was kicked out of Paris at the beginning of the century for organizing orgies for politicians and other notables, so he came here where he would be left alone to amuse himself with the island’s young boys. There used to be a lot of that kind of thing on Capri — still is, probably.’

‘I think I’ve heard of him,’ said Sophie. ‘It was a big scandal. He was heir to a steel fortune, wasn’t he?’

‘That’s right. He was very wealthy, easily the richest man on the island, and he was still in his twenties when he arrived. He built himself a fabulous villa way up here, and spent most of his days with his boyfriend smoking opium and writing bad poetry. But he was too much even for the Capresi. He died here about fifteen years ago — too much drugs and alcohol. They think it was suicide.’

‘Have you seen the villa?’ Sophie asked.

‘Yes. No one lives there now, but a local family looks after it. If you give them a tip, they’ll show you around. It’s a bit of a mess, the garden is overgrown, but it’s in a spectacular position. And there is an extraordinary opium den in the basement.’

‘Can we have a look?’

‘Maybe on the way back. If we have the energy.’

We continued the climb, until we finally reached the top of the cliffs and the Villa Jovis. Despite having been only recently excavated, the villa itself was a bit of a disappointment: it looked less like a luxurious palace and more like an ancient water-gathering system. Massive cisterns were needed to keep the place watered in the summer, and they were what had survived best after two thousand years. And in an act of pious vandalism, someone had built a little church at the highest point to sniff down on the pagan emperor’s infamous ruins.

If the villa was disappointing, its situation was not. In an island full of fabulous views, this was the most magnificent. The classic shore of the Bay of Naples stretched in a long curve from the island of Ischia, through Naples and Vesuvius, to the Cape of Sorrento. On the southern side of the cape lay the fabled Amalfi coast and the Gulf of Salerno and, of course, much closer, lurked the rocky green beauty of Capri itself. Just below the peak, a straight shaded avenue led under pine trees to some flimsy wooden railings. I approached gingerly — this was the notorious Salto di Tiberio — and looked over. Hundreds of feet below, deep-blue water swirled and sucked at the rocks at the foot of the cliffs, so bleached they were nearly white. It was a long, long way down.

Capri was an island of beauty, certainly, but it was also an island of evil. Had Tiberius’s depravity inspired Baron Fersen? And all those other Northern Europeans who had visited Capri in search of young boys?

Stephen and Sophie joined me. ‘It’s amazing, isn’t it, Angus?’ said Sophie.

‘It certainly is,’ I said, with a touch of polite enthusiasm.

Stephen nodded to me. I smiled back quickly and insincerely.

I drew back; the couple — because that’s what they were — leaned on the wooden railings. I stared at their backs: Stephen’s broad shoulders, his shirt damp with sweat from the climb; Sophie’s lithe body hugged by her white dress in the breeze.

This was an evil island, where evil acts were done, acts which were not tolerated by civilized society. This was the very spot where Tiberius had watched his enemies, real and imagined, being flung to their deaths. On the climb I had almost forgotten my anger, but now it came flooding back through my veins, burning me from the inside. Two steps forward, a lift and a push, and Stephen would tumble down to sea below. What then? I could leap after him into the cool blackness of oblivion. Perhaps I would take Sophie with me. The anger threatened to overwhelm me, so I turned and stumbled down the path away from the cliff edge to the safety of the shade and the water cisterns.

We were on our way back down the via Tiberio towards Capri town, when Sophie stopped by the water fountain. ‘Tony! Is this the way to that villa you were talking about?’

‘That’s it,’ said Tony.

‘Can we go and have a look?’ Sophie asked.

‘Let’s get back home,’ said Stephen. ‘I’m parched. I need a drink.’

‘There’s a water fountain right here.’

‘I mean a real drink.’

Nathan and Madeleine murmured their agreement.

‘I can go by myself,’ said Sophie. ‘I’ll catch up with you later.’

I watched Tony hesitate; on the one hand he wanted to be a good host to his guests and their desire for sustenance back at his villa, on the other he was reluctant to let Sophie go unaccompanied.

‘I’ll come with you,’ I said.

For a moment, Sophie looked surprised. Then she smiled. ‘Thanks, Angus.’

‘OK,’ said Tony. ‘We’ll have lunch ready for you when you get down.’

Sophie and I turned off the road and along a path through orchards and a vineyard. It was comfortable to walk alone with her. I felt calmer than I had on the Salto di Tiberio and I told myself to be civil. She smiled at me and pointed out the general loveliness of the flowers, the trees and Capri. I agreed — how could I not?

After a couple of hundred yards we turned uphill along a walled lane through a wood of pines and cypresses. Suddenly we came upon a wrought-iron gate with a bell pull, which I duly tugged three times. Eventually a small, round woman arrived, dressed in black with her grey hair coiled up on top of her head under a scarf. She smiled at us in a friendly way. In broken Italian, Sophie asked if we could see the villa. I pressed some lire into the woman’s hand and she opened the gate.

The villa rose large and white in front of us, surrounded by a jungle of overgrown trees and shrubs. To the side, a broad stairway led down to a bronze sculpture of a naked boy preening himself, and beyond that a view of the island and the harbour far down below. The entrance to the villa was a grand portico flanked by Ionic columns, its white plaster flaking. Above the doorway were the Latin words Amori et dolori sacrum: ‘Sacred to love and sorrow’.

The heat had risen steadily during the morning, but as we stepped inside the villa’s hallway, the temperature dropped noticeably. The woman led us up a marble staircase with a wrought-iron balustrade and into a magnificent bedroom. We were drawn immediately to the balcony, with its view over the sea, emerald near the foot of the cliffs rather than blue, towards the Cape of Sorrento and the Amalfi coast. Above and behind the villa, rosemary bushes and limestone boulders sprouted out of the steep slope beneath Tiberius’s ruined palace.

The place smelled of damp and dust. There was plaster on the floors, and cracks in the walls.

‘It’s pretty exposed up here,’ I said. ‘It must take a battering from the wind and the rain.’

‘Yes, but isn’t it marvellous?’ said Sophie. ‘Imagine what it would have been like in its heyday. What a place to have a party!’

The caretaker led us down to a salon on the ground floor, decorated with blue and white tiles, and gold leaf, and then down some more stairs to the fumatorio, the opium den. This was a semi-circular room framed by two thick embossed columns. The floor and walls were tiled in orange. Torn tapestries displaying columns of either Chinese or Japanese characters hung between small windows looking out over the garden, and beyond it the Cape of Sorrento. Dusty divans, their cushions richly embroidered, lined the walls. The caretaker withdrew, leaving Sophie and me alone in the room. The irony of her tactful attempt to allow us to enjoy the romance of the place alone bit into me.

Sophie spoke. ‘I like you, Angus.’

‘I like you too.’

‘And you are a good friend of Stephen’s.’

‘That’s true,’ I said, although I wasn’t at all sure if it still was.

‘I’d like it, we’d like it, if you could remain friends with both of us.’

I didn’t answer right away. I sat on the curved window seat and looked out over the garden to the Mediterranean glimmering through the jungle.

‘How long have you been... together?’

‘Since Madeleine’s wedding,’ Sophie said. ‘We got on really well that weekend. Stephen drove me back to Paris and we spent a week there together. Then he went down to Antibes to meet you and bring you on here.’

‘He didn’t tell me!’ I said. Sophie had just stoked the embers of my anger.

‘Didn’t he?’ said Sophie. ‘You English, you don’t talk about anything, do you? Anything important.’

‘It appears not.’ I turned again to stare out of the window. The fury was building. The bastard! Why hadn’t Stephen told me he had spent a week with Sophie? He must have known I would find out eventually.

‘I enjoyed that afternoon in Honfleur, Angus,’ Sophie said. ‘We had an extraordinary conversation. As I said, I like you, I would like to be your friend. But nothing happened. I don’t think I did anything to let you think something had happened. Did I? And it was four years ago.’

I didn’t reply. She was right, of course; I had built her up over the years to mean so much more to me than she really should. Yet foolish though it sounded, I loved her. Not just then, but now. I loved the way she was talking to me, her kindness and awkward sincerity; I loved her big blue wistful eyes; I loved the little freckles on the end of her nose and I loved her body under that white summer dress...

An idea came to me. I recognized it as a bad idea immediately; a mean, nasty idea. I knew I should squash it, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to speak before sense and reason stopped me.

‘Do you know why Stephen and I are friends?’

‘You were in the same college at Oxford,’ Sophie said.

‘Yes. But I went to a school no one has ever heard of and have a Yorkshire accent. Stephen went to Eton and is loaded.’

‘So?’

‘So at Oxford people like that don’t naturally become friends.’

‘That is absurd.’

‘Shall I tell you what happened?’

Sophie shrugged. She looked doubtful; I went on before she had a chance to stop me.

‘Stephen had a friend from Eton named Maurice. I would say his best friend. They were both good-looking — although Maurice was a good deal more feminine than Stephen, dark, exotic, graceful. They were both rich.’

Sophie was frowning. She could see where this was going and she didn’t like it. Well that was too bad for her.

‘They used to weigh up the relative attractiveness of freshers in college, and bet each other that they could seduce them. They were quite successful. Anyway, Maurice picked on me as a victim for Stephen. Apparently he thought I was handsome and rough. The wager was ten pounds.’

Sophie’s frown had deepened. Good.

‘I was difficult. Stephen tried hard, he tried damn hard. But he never earned his ten pounds.’

Sophie was staring at me, her expression one of disgust. Very good.

‘That doesn’t explain how you became friends,’ she said.

‘No,’ I said. ‘But it should warn you that Stephen likes men as much as he likes women. More.’

The expression of disgust deepened. Suddenly I realized that Sophie’s distaste was aimed at me, not Stephen.

‘There is an English word “hateful”, is there not?’

I nodded.

Sophie’s disgust had turned to anger. There was moisture in her eyes, but also fire. Her cheeks were red. ‘That was hateful. You are hateful, Angus!’

She turned on her heel and left the den.

I closed my eyes. My own anger had been flattened by Sophie’s. What the hell was I thinking? She was right, of course. She was absolutely right. And I had given her a completely misleading idea of Stephen’s and my friendship, which was based on so much more than that initial failed seduction. Yes, I had misled Sophie, and I had earned her contempt. I had earned my own contempt. Yes, Stephen should have told me about Sophie, of course he should. But he hadn’t, and I should forgive him. The fact that I couldn’t do that was my problem.

I had behaved appallingly badly and I was in danger of ruining everything for everyone. I was ashamed of myself, so ashamed. I had to leave the island right away. Run. So I hurried back to the villa, apologized to Tony and to Nathan and Madeleine, and caught the 4.30 p.m. steamer back to Naples with five minutes to spare.

I had a war to fight. A war in which, perhaps, I might die.

Or perhaps Stephen would.

8

Monday 15 March 1999, Wyvis

Clémence closed the book and looked up to meet the old man’s gaze. His eyes were full of pain.

‘I didn’t behave very well, did I?’ he said.

‘Not really, no,’ said Clémence.

‘I wish I had behaved better.’

‘Do you remember any of it at all?’

‘Yes,’ said the old man. ‘Yes, I do. Bits. I remember that opium den in the Villa Fersen. I remember Tiberius’s jump. I remember Stephen now, I can see him and Sophie up there.’

‘That’s something,’ said Clémence.

‘You know how I described the hole in my memory — like a gap in the centre of a picture?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s as if I can begin to see vague shapes in the middle of that picture. Disjointed shapes. I don’t know, it’s like a half-finished jigsaw puzzle where you have done the edges and are making a start at the centre.’

‘I think I understand,’ said Clémence. ‘Can you remember anything about what happens next?’

The pain intensified in the old man’s eyes. ‘That’s the thing. I’m not sure I want to see the picture. The whole picture.’

For a moment Clémence considered reading out the prologue. But the old man would discover what happened to Sophie soon enough; Clémence didn’t want to scare him off. They were making progress with the jigsaw. That was her job. And she was fascinated.

Now she knew how her grandmother and grandfather had met. They had obviously loved each other. She supposed everyone’s grandfathers and grandmothers must have loved each other at some point, but she felt privileged to see hers on the page. Especially since her family had subsequently blown itself apart.

‘Do you remember writing it? Making the jigsaw?’

‘I think so. I think I can remember writing that last scene in the opium den. I can remember the shame. I’m sure now it was me who wrote the book. I am Angus Culzie. I am Angus. The book is the truth, it’s not a novel.’

Clémence waited for him to say more.

‘It’s my life. I need to become reacquainted with it if I am going to live with it. However unpleasant it will be.’

‘So we’ll read some more tomorrow?’

‘Yes.’ He stared hard at the fireplace, as if looking for an answer behind the glowing logs. ‘How old are you, Clémence? Nineteen?’

‘Twenty.’

‘About the same age as I was when I met Sophie. Have you ever loved anyone like that? Or is the world different now?’

Mind your own business, thought Clémence. But his eyes were pleading. Pleading for what? Understanding probably. Besides which, she had just read his innermost thoughts, his obsession.

‘I had a thing for a boy in the year above me at school,’ she said. ‘For a few weeks I would wake up every day and pray he would talk to me. But that passed. He went out with Gaby Porter. Turned out he was a bit of a...’ She had wanted to use the word ‘prick’, but hesitated in front of the old man. ‘Not-very-nice guy.’

‘Poor Gaby Porter.’

‘No. She deserved him. I never liked Gaby Porter since she stole my favourite pair of leggings and claimed they were hers.’

‘What colour were they?’

‘The leggings? Sort of purple, I think. I got them at Topshop. Why?’

‘Just want to get the full picture. And now? Is there anyone now?’

Clémence smiled shyly. ‘There’s a guy called Callum. From uni. We’ve only been going out three weeks. But I miss him, now. He’s gone home to Glasgow to work in a pub.’ She looked at the old man guiltily. ‘I asked him to come up here and stay with me.’

‘Good,’ said the old man, with a smile. ‘I’d like to meet him.’

For a moment Clémence thought that she would like Callum to meet the old man too. Then she remembered what he had done. ‘But no. That’s nothing like your obsession for my grandmother.’

‘Yes.’ The old man put his head in his hands. ‘Your grandmother.’

Clémence felt sorry for him, she couldn’t help herself. He already knew his obsession was wrong. He had no idea yet how wrong. Or did he? For the first time she wondered if, in fact, he had an inkling.

‘It’s weird about Grandpa and his mother in Antibes,’ she said.

‘What do you mean?’ said the old man.

‘How he felt abandoned by her. And then how he was worried she would jump on Angus. On you.’

‘The upper classes led pretty racy lives in those days.’

‘Yes,’ said Clémence.

The old man looked at her closely. ‘That’s not what you meant though, was it?’

‘No,’ said Clémence.

They sat in silence. A comfortable silence. Then the old man spoke. ‘You can tell me if you like. I won’t tell anyone else. And I’ll probably forget it anyway. It might make you feel better, though your family life has nothing to do with me.’

Clémence was about to shake her head, brush him off, take the book back upstairs, shut herself in her room away from him, but something stopped her. It was those brown eyes, the air of calm attention. She didn’t know who the hell Alastair Cunningham was, she had barely even heard of him until a few days before, and yet she felt she knew him. It was partly because she had just read out loud his most intimate secrets as a young man, but it was more than that. She felt he was on her side. And she desperately needed someone to be on her side.

Callum was, of course, but she was too ashamed to tell Callum, at least not yet. But the old man? After all the bad stuff she had read about him, it didn’t seem wrong to share the shame.

And she felt alone. So alone.

The old man waited.

‘My parents split up three years ago when I was seventeen. My mother started going out with a banker, an Australian guy called Patrick. After a few months we moved into his place — he had a two-bedroom apartment in Mid-Levels, so there was room for me. Of course I didn’t like him at first, he was my mother’s boyfriend, after all, but he was always nice to me, and patient. And I have to admit he was quite good-looking, in a tubby kind of way.’

‘Tubby?’

‘Yeah. He had a bit of a tummy, small and round that peeked over his belt — nothing like Dad, who is as thin as a rake. In fact I gave his stomach a name: Reginald. I used to say: “Hi, Reginald, are you hungry this morning?” every day at breakfast. It was meant to be nasty, and it wound Maman up, but Patrick seemed to like it. Eventually, I began to tolerate him, and then we got on pretty well. He was funny, and he took me seriously in a way neither of my parents had ever really done.’

She paused. Glanced at the old man, who was listening intently, unsure whether to go on.

‘You don’t have to tell me more if you don’t want to,’ he said.

‘No, that’s OK.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Then, when I was home over Christmas, just this last January, Maman was out somewhere, I was watching a dumb film on TV, in fact it was actually called Dumb and Dumber. Have you seen it?’

‘How would I know?’ said the old man, with a smile.

‘Right. I’m guessing you haven’t. Anyway, Patrick joined me on the sofa to watch it. He had opened a bottle of wine and he gave me some. We started swapping comments on how stupid the film was, and what with the wine I was laughing pretty hard. And then...’

She raised her eyes to the old man, but there was no point in stopping now, he could see what was coming.

‘Then he kissed me. I was so surprised, I responded, but only for a second, then I pushed him away, and yelled at him to get off me. He looked angry, for a moment I thought he was going to force himself on me. Then he said: “you shouldn’t have led me on like that”, and I ran off to my room.

‘Well, I didn’t know what to do. I shut myself up in my room. Should I tell Maman? Should I just keep quiet? Would he try it again? How could I even live in his flat with him now?

‘I thought the best thing was to confront him, and demand an apology. Make him promise not to ever touch me again. Maybe if he was sincerely sorry, if I believed he really would leave me alone, I might be able to forget it had ever happened. But what if he didn’t apologize?

‘Anyway, I never got the chance to find out. No one said anything at breakfast the next day, and I could tell Maman was very upset. After Patrick had gone to work, Maman sat me down at the kitchen table. “I know what happened yesterday afternoon, Clémence,” she began. For a second I felt really relieved: Patrick had told Maman all about it, and Maman was going to take charge. Maybe she would leave him and take me with her. But then I saw her face. She wasn’t just upset, there was anger there, and something else. Hatred. Hatred directed at me.

‘She said: “I know what you did, Clémence, and I can’t believe it. It’s not like you’re some thirteen-year-old with a crush, you are twenty, for God’s sake! And you know I love Patrick and he loves me. What were you thinking?”

‘So I said: “What was I thinking? What do you think happened? What has Patrick told you?”

‘And she said: “You tried to kiss him. And when he pushed you away you said that you loved him. Didn’t you think he would tell me?”

‘Of course, I said that that wasn’t what had happened at all, that it was Patrick who had jumped on me, but Patrick had anticipated all that. Maman said that he had told her right away, and that he had been sympathetic towards me, talking about schoolgirl crushes, but that she thought I was an adult woman and knew exactly what I was doing. She was going to buy me an air ticket to Scotland that same day, and she didn’t want me to come back to Hong Kong at Easter.’

‘How dreadful for you!’ said the old man.

‘I tried to reason with her, but there was no way she was going to believe me rather than Patrick. She was so besotted with him, she couldn’t conceive that he might be lying.’

‘Whereas she could conceive that her daughter was lying.’

‘That’s what it looks like. It’s not as if I ever lied very much as a kid.’

‘Did you tell your father?’

‘I tried. But she’d got to him.’ Clémence paused. She swallowed. ‘She’d told him that I had tried to seduce her boyfriend.’

‘And he believed her and not you? Why would he do that?’

‘He and I...’ Clémence hesitated. ‘We have our own problems. He wanted to believe her.’

Clémence closed her eyes and shook her head. Her eyes were stinging, but she didn’t want to break down in front of the old man. She needed to keep control.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. And he was. She could tell from the tone of his voice that he was. ‘Have you told your boyfriend? Callum, was that his name?’

‘No!’ Clémence said. She found she couldn’t look at the old man. ‘I can’t tell him. What if he doesn’t believe me? What if he thinks I’m some slut who wants to jump into bed with middle-aged men? What then? I’d lose him!’

‘I’m sure he’d believe you.’

Clémence kept her eyes on the corner of the kitchen, where the orange plastic rubbish bin stood.

‘Of course he wouldn’t. That was what was so clever about what Patrick did. He took the initiative — got his retaliation in early. Everyone will believe him not me.’

‘I believe you,’ said the old man. ‘Look at me, Clémence.’

Clémence kept her eyes on the rubbish bin.

‘I said look at me.’

Reluctantly, she did.

‘I believe you. Of course I believe you.’

She sniffed. ‘You’re just saying that.’

‘No, I mean it. It’s obvious just looking at you, just listening to you, you’re an honest girl, Clémence. I’d bet my life on it.’

She looked into his eyes. He did mean it. There was something about that calm, steady gaze under those bushy eyebrows, the composure of that craggy face, that suggested reliability, authority, confidence. The reassurance of a wise doctor who spoke from decades of experience and would never deceive you. She smiled.

‘I’m glad you told me,’ he said.

‘So am I.’ And it was true, she did feel lighter. ‘But you can see how I might sympathize with Grandpa?’

‘I can,’ said the old man.

They both heard the front door open. ‘Hello!’ It was a woman’s voice.

‘They clearly don’t believe in ringing doorbells around here,’ Clémence muttered to the old man. ‘Yes, hello!’ she called, getting to her feet and going out to the hallway.

She was met by a small red-haired woman with a long freckled face, wearing a nurse’s uniform.

‘You must be Clémence,’ she said with a smile. ‘I’m Rose, the district nurse. I’ve come to check up on Dr Cunningham.’

‘Come through,’ said Clémence.

The nurse fussed over the old man and professed herself very happy with what she saw. Physically, he was recovering well, and she was glad that the memory jogging was going well. She checked that Clémence had made an appointment for Dr Cunningham to see Dr Stenhouse at the hospital in Inverness the following Monday, although Clémence hoped that by then Aunt Madeleine would be in charge.

Just as the nurse was leaving, they had another visitor: Jerry Ranger in his small blue Peugeot, hired at an airport, presumably.

He stood awkwardly in the doorway, tall and rangy. Just like his name. Which, it occurred to Clémence, didn’t sound like a real name at all; it must have been made up.

‘Hi, Alastair,’ he said tentatively to the old man. He proffered his hand, and the old man shook it, staring at Jerry hard. ‘I’m Jerry, your neighbour from Corravachie, the cottage further down the loch.’

The old man scratched his scalp and shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Jerry. I’m afraid I’ve had an accident and my memory has gone.’

‘You don’t remember me at all?’

The old man’s eyes betrayed a mixture of sadness and frustration. ‘No. Were we friends?’

‘Kind of,’ said Jerry. ‘Good neighbours, certainly. I’ve only been here three weeks, but we have had a few conversations, a couple of drinks. I come from California? I write songs? You told me a lot about your time in Australia.’

‘Eagles,’ said the old man. ‘Wedge-tailed eagles. I remember those.’

‘That’s right. And being a doctor out there. And how the weather was much better than here.’

‘My wife. I had a wife called Helen. Did I talk about her much?’

Jerry winced. ‘A little. She was an ex-wife. To be honest, you didn’t seem to like her much. You’ve been divorced for years. She’s passed away now, so you said. Don’t you remember her at all?’

The old man shook his head. ‘Not in the slightest.’

Clémence made them all a cup of tea and they sat down around the kitchen table. Jerry, with his neatly trimmed beard, his jeans and the white T-shirt peeking out from under his lumberjack shirt, looked very American in this very Scottish cottage. The old man examined his neighbour closely, hungry for information, for memories.

‘So you don’t remember anything at all from before the accident?’

‘I’m beginning to,’ said the old man. ‘Thanks to Clémence.’

‘We’ve been reading a book together,’ she said. ‘It’s a kind of memoir, written by Alastair. It starts in the nineteen thirties.’

‘Oh, really?’ said Jerry. ‘That sounds fascinating. Can I take a look?’

Clémence nipped upstairs to fetch Death At Wyvis from her bedroom and handed it to Jerry. ‘Angus Culzie, huh? Just like this cottage. And you say that’s you, Alastair?’

‘It looks like it,’ said Clémence.

‘Can I read a bit?’ said Jerry.

Clémence reached out and grabbed the book out of his hands. She realized she didn’t want Jerry to read the first page, at least not in front of the old man. ‘Sorry. It’s, um, private. You might ask how a published novel can be private, but it is, at least for now. So please don’t read it.’

Jerry seemed a bit taken aback, but he shrugged. ‘OK.’ He glanced at the old man, who looked troubled. ‘So you think your memory is coming back?’

‘Slowly,’ said the old man. ‘But it’s just scraps of the past from many years back. Although, interestingly, I can remember my childhood quite well. It all goes very vague when I get to university.’

Jerry smiled. ‘I remember our talks together with pleasure,’ he said. ‘It’s a shame you’ve forgotten them.’

‘They might come back,’ said Clémence.

‘What do the doctors say?’

‘That the memories might come back,’ said Clémence. ‘Or they might not. “Jogging” helps, which is what we have been doing. But they really don’t know.’

‘Can you tell me a bit about Australia?’ asked the old man. ‘At least what I told you.’

Jerry told him what he could, but he couldn’t remember himself precisely what the old man had said. He had emigrated to Australia in the sixties, got a job in a town in the hills outside Perth — Jerry thought it was called Montgomery, but Clémence and the old man agreed it must have been Mundaring where Jeanette was the librarian. He had become an eager bird watcher and travelled around Australia, looking in particular for eagles. Jerry remembered a couple of stories featuring eccentric patients at his clinic and some barbed comments about Helen not letting him travel as much as he wanted to. There wasn’t really very much, but the old man lapped it up. Clémence could see that the dread he seemed to feel when listening to Death At Wyvis was banished.

By the time Jerry left, promising to drop in again the following day, the old man was in better spirits.

Jerry drove back to his own cottage. He made himself a cup of coffee and sat in the living room, looking out over the loch. He had had to check out the old man for himself, and he was relieved with what he had seen and heard.

He picked up the phone and dialled.

‘It’s me, Jerry... the stalker’s wife was right, he has forgotten everything... he doesn’t recognize me.’

He listened.

‘No... no... no, we’re fine, I’m sure of it. He definitely doesn’t remember me pushing him down the stairs.’

9

Tuesday 16 March 1999, Wyvis

The old man woke up early. His brain had had a busy night, dreaming frantically, as if it was trying out a whole series of connections to find one that worked. People from his past, his whole life, had come and gone in a bewildering swirl of locations: Brimham Rocks in Nidderdale, Oxford, Tiberius’s villa, Wyvis, a low bungalow amongst tall trees which he assumed must be his house in Australia. Clémence was with him all the way through, except sometimes she changed into Sophie.

He woke up totally disoriented.

He looked out of his window at the loch and the flank of Ben Wyvis, more brown than white now that the snow melted. That was familiar. He decided to get out and go for a walk before breakfast.

Clémence was awake, but not up; he could hear the radio on in her bedroom. He set off along his familiar route: striking out on to the hill and then down to the loch beside Wyvis Lodge.

The fresh air, the exercise and the familiar landscape comforted him. It was cold, the breeze carried a damp chill and clouds were pressing in over the top of Ben Wyvis, promising rain later, or perhaps snow. Over on the other side of the loch, an eagle was soaring to a height just below the cloud base. A group of hinds threaded their way up the hillside from the water. They were only a quarter of a mile away, and it took them a few moments to notice him before they bounded off.

The isolation, the desolation, the emptiness, lifted his heart. Up here on the moor he could see for miles, but in those miles there were only three signs of habitation — the empty Wyvis Lodge at the head of the loch, Culzie, and the cottage of Corravachie further down.

And yet the moorland was teeming with activity. Birds bustled and twittered, melted snow hustled down the hillside in hidden gullies, bogs and unseen burns. The mountain was alive with skylarks and water.

His walk took him down to the shore of the loch and then along the track towards the boathouse, where a pair of swans were calmly floating. He stopped and stared at the wooden structure.

Eventually, Clémence would read about what happened to Sophie there; her death must be the Death At Wyvis of the title. And when Clémence read it, she would hate him. He already hated himself; despised himself. Perhaps somehow a still-functioning part of his brain had tried to erase the unpalatable past from the other damaged part. Helped the amnesia along a little. Was that possible? It seemed unlikely, but he would ask the doctors. Although that would mean admitting that he was a murderer to them. He really didn’t want that.

He was ashamed to be who he was.

He decided not to walk past the boathouse that morning, but to take a narrow path through the woods directly back up to Culzie. It was hard work, the path fought its way uphill through large boulders and small stones, and leafless branches reached out and tugged at him. Twice he nearly slipped.

He paused and sat on a mossy log, ignoring the dampness on his arse. He could do it. The balance was the tricky bit, and his right knee was stiff, but he was still physically fit for an eighty-three-year-old.

Which was lucky, because dredging his memory was exhausting. Things were coming back. He could visualize that big house in Deauville. And he could almost see Nathan and Alden. Stephen was taking shape. He could hear his voice. He saw a tall young man, grinning in a leather armchair. Oxford. That was his room at Oxford.

Stephen. There was something he had to tell Stephen. Or give Stephen. What the hell was it? It was something really important. It wasn’t that he had killed Sophie, but it was something like that. Another matter of life and death.

Of death.

He groaned out loud. What the hell was it?

Frustrated, angry with himself, he set off up the rough path through the woods back to Culzie.

Jerry put down his binoculars when he saw the old man turn off the lochside track before the boathouse and head off up into the woods. The silhouette was familiar — the lopsided gait, the slight stoop. He was a sprightly old guy, Jerry would have to give him that.

Only the roof of Culzie was visible from outside the woods, but Jerry had spotted the old man on the open hillside. He had found a good vantage point behind a boulder by the shore of the loch, from where he could track the old man’s movements. But now the old man was in the woods, he would be out of sight all the way back to Culzie.

Jerry stared at the woods, and the rooftop in their midst. What the hell should he do?

Jerry, too, had had a bad night. His initial relief that the old man couldn’t remember him at all had subsided. The old man’s memory might return. From what the girl had said, the doctors expected at least some of it to come back over time. But how much? And over what period?

There was a library in Dingwall, there must be some books in there about amnesia. Maybe even access to the Internet. He would check, but the most likely result was that he would remain uncertain, that recovery from head injuries was inherently unpredictable.

There seemed to be two options. Wait and see how much the old man remembered, and just hope that he didn’t remember anything important. Or act now.

He had acted before, and it had nearly worked. He should have checked the body more carefully; he could have sworn that the old man wasn’t breathing as he lay on the floor at the foot of the stairs, blood dribbling out of the back of his head. Why hadn’t he banged the old man’s head into the floor a couple of times to finish him off as he had originally intended?

Because he didn’t want to leave any incriminating forensic evidence if he didn’t have to. But that part of the plan had worked perfectly. No one was in the slightest bit suspicious about an old man falling down the stairs and hitting his head. Why should a forensic scene-of-crime technician go anywhere near him?

Perhaps Jerry should try something more certain. There was an axe at Corravachie, which he used for splitting firewood. And the rifle locked in the gun cupboard.

No. Once the police suspected murder, a house-to-house inquiry around Loch Glass would turn up two houses and one suspect. Him. An accident was much better.

Jerry had an idea. He picked up the binoculars and examined the track near the boathouse.

It was a good idea.

Clémence heard the stairs creak as the old man descended them, followed by the slam of the front door. She turned off Zoë Ball — Radio 1 was the only half-decent station she could get — and extricated her hair from the straighteners. She went downstairs to the phone in the hallway. She hesitated before dialling; these international calls would blow a hole in the old man’s phone bill. So what? He deserved to pay. She dialled the Vietnam country code and the number in Ho Chi Minh City.

The school secretary took some persuading, but after a wait that seemed like half an hour but was probably only five minutes, she heard the familiar voice of her father.

‘What’s up, Clémence?’ He spoke in English. They used to speak to each other in French, but somehow they had switched to English after he had left Hong Kong. ‘Are you all right?’

He sounded worried. He sounded as if he cared. That was nice.

‘I’m OK, Dad. But I’ve got a couple of questions to ask you.’

‘Is it urgent?’ His voice was sterner now. ‘You told the secretary it was urgent.’

‘It is. It is. I’m at Culzie cottage on the Wyvis estate. With Alastair. Alastair Cunningham.’

‘What! What the hell are you doing there?’

‘He fell down the stairs and had an accident. He has lost his memory: retrograde amnesia, they call it. He doesn’t have any relatives. Aunt Madeleine asked me to come and look after him until she can get here from America.’

‘Why didn’t you check with me first, Clémence?’

‘Because we never speak to each other.’ It was true. They had only spoken twice in the last six months: once in September when she had returned from her disastrous stay with him in Vietnam, and then again when she had looked for sympathy after telling him about Patrick, and had received contempt. He never called her, and whenever she had called him over the last couple of years, he didn’t seem at all interested in talking to her. And it cost a fortune. So she had stopped.

‘There is a good reason why that man has no friends in England,’ her father said. ‘I want you to leave there right away. I want you to have nothing to do with the old bastard. Aunt Madeleine should never have sent you.’

‘All right, Dad,’ said Clémence. ‘She’s coming this afternoon, so I can hand over to her then. But I’ve still got a couple of questions to ask you. And they are important.’

Her father sighed. ‘All right. What are they?’

Clémence swallowed, listening to the long-distance hiss in the pause. She suspected her father wasn’t going to like her questions, but she had to ask them.

‘We are reading this book together, to help Alastair remember. It’s called Death At Wyvis by Angus Culzie. Do you know it?’

‘Yes, I know it.’

‘Was it written by Alastair? And is it true?’

‘How far have you got?’

‘They’ve just gone to Capri. Angus has had an argument with Sophie.’

‘Well don’t read any more, Clémence. Just leave Wyvis right away. There are things in that book that you are better off not knowing.’

‘No!’ said Clémence. She didn’t often defy her father, but she was angry. ‘No, Dad. That’s exactly what Grandpa said when I asked him about it—’

‘You spoke to Grandpa?’

‘Yes,’ said Clémence.

‘Jesus. You shouldn’t have done that.’

‘Well, I did. And he didn’t answer my question. It’s all true, isn’t it? It must be true or else you wouldn’t be so worried about me reading it.’

There was silence, or a hiss, for several seconds.

‘Yes. It is true.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me, Dad? Why didn’t you tell me that my grandmother was murdered?’

‘Because I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t want you to think about it. You didn’t even know her. She was my mother, remember. After she was killed I ran away to Morocco. I have spent a lot of time and effort making sure that you aren’t troubled by that mess. So please do as I ask, Clémence. Promise me you won’t read any more of that fucking book.’

Clémence never said no to her father. But what he had said made it even clearer than it had been before, that the key to understanding her screwed-up family lay in the pages of that book. And if she didn’t understand her family, she didn’t understand herself.

‘No, Dad. I don’t care what you say, I’m going to read the rest of it. I need to know.’

‘Clémence—’

But she hung up.

She felt a mixture of anger and guilt. Clémence had mostly been an obedient child, but she was older now and could make her own decisions. It was OK for her father to warn her that she might not want to learn what had happened at Wyvis to her grandmother. But it was her decision; he had no right to stop her.

She’d had a mostly good relationship with her father, until he had walked out on her and her mother. Subtly encouraged by her mother, she had believed that it was all his fault, that he had abandoned his wife and daughter in a fit of selfishness, but now she was pretty certain that Patrick was the reason that her parents had split apart.

She had hoped that when she had gone to visit him in Hoh Chi Minh City over the summer, she would have been able to rebuild the relationship, at least to see things from his point of view. But she had been surprised — shocked — to find that he was living with a girlfriend, Ngoc, of whom she had never even heard. Ngoc was about thirty, slinkily beautiful, with a simpering, insincere smile. For the first couple of days father and daughter had had some good conversations, but as each day passed Ngoc’s displeasure at Clémence’s presence became clearer, and her father withdrew. Until, by the time she left, she was under the impression that they were both glad to see the back of her.

For years now, Clémence had lived her life alone. She had envied her friends at boarding school whose homes were only twenty miles away, and whose parents loved each other and visited every other weekend to take their daughters out for lunch or to watch them play netball. She had a mother whom she was growing to hate, and a father whom she never saw. The only thing her parents seemed to agree on was that she should live thousands of miles away from them. Everyone else had a family; why couldn’t she have one too?

Inevitably, she had blamed herself for this. There was something wrong with her, there must be or why wouldn’t her parents care about her? One good thing about reading Death At Wyvis with the old man, was that she was beginning to suspect that actually her problems weren’t rooted in the present and defects in her personality, but in the past, between the covers of that book.

She considered the people she had been reading about: Angus’s friends, or rather Alastair’s. She was getting a pretty good idea of them, but she didn’t know what they looked like. She wondered whether there were any photos in the old man’s study; Sheila MacInnes had suggested that there were.

The old man would probably be out for a while. She nipped up the stairs to the study and opened the desk drawers. There were some letters, an exercise book, a passport, a birth certificate, bank statements, bills. There was an article from Cognitive Neuropsychology dated 1997 and entitled ‘Confabulation: knowledge and recollective experience’.

And in the bottom drawer was an old leather-bound photograph album, with the dates ‘1935–1939’ written on it in white pencil.

She opened it. There was a picture of a boy with Alastair’s cleft chin standing next to a middle-aged couple by a tree near a stream. They were all smiling at the camera; and the older man was clutching a pipe. Beneath it was scrawled in white Mother, Me, Father.

Clémence flipped the pages, fascinated. There was a girl called Joyce — Alastair’s younger sister. There was his college at Oxford: a group of male students in jackets and ties, including a tall and incredibly handsome Stephen, her grandfather, standing next to Alastair in the quad of a college. Stephen’s smile was knowing, warm, yet dangerous. A couple of Alastair playing rugby for the Greyhounds, whoever they were. Each photograph was labelled in neat white writing.

Then Paris — the Eiffel Tower, the Seine. Nathan, short and swarthy, sitting with Stephen at a café. Deauville: a tall half-timbered house with turrets. Two smiling girls — Madeleine and Sophie — one dark, one fair, both beautiful, both wearing scarves around their necks. It was true, Sophie did look a bit like Clémence, although Sophie was blonder and much prettier. No wonder Alastair had fallen for her. But there was Stephen’s wicked smile again, and Clémence could see why Sophie had picked him rather than Alastair.

Only two or three photographs of Bart’s, a family Christmas in 1938 and then Capri. Towering mountains, sea of shining grey, flowers blooming in monochrome, two or three shots of the friends relaxing around an outside table on a terrace, always including Sophie. Then a ruin that was labelled Villa Jovis, water cisterns. Then a more modern façade with peeling plaster, unlabelled but it must be the Villa Fersen. And the ornate but tattered interior of the villa itself, and a semicircular room with tapestries: the opium den.

And then nothing. Four or five blank black pages.

Clémence turned back to a couple of the photographs of Alastair. There weren’t many of them, which wasn’t surprising since he was the photographer. They reminded her of someone or something.

Who?

Stephen speeded up as he approached the crossing, but the green man had finished flickering and turned to red by the time he got there. He swore mildly to himself: that particular crossing took an age to turn green again.

Two young women joined him, shoving pushchairs. They were speaking animatedly in French. This seemed to be the new thing in Notting Hill — first it was the English yuppie bankers, then the Americans, and now the French spilling over from Kensington. There were very few people he still recognized from his arrival in Notting Hill in the seventies. Mr Chaudhury, who had just sold him the copy of the Racing Post which he was clutching under his arm, being one of those few.

Stephen eavesdropped. The women were discussing one of the fathers at school who always wore very tight trousers. The question was, did he do that on purpose to advertise the size of his manhood? Indeed, was his manhood worth advertising? The women were so engrossed in the problem that they had not noticed Stephen.

They were quite attractive really, especially the small one with the promising chest. Years ago, they would have noticed him. The conversation would have tailed off, there would have been sideways glances, and then whispers when he walked off. But not now. Obviously not now.

He cleared his throat and addressed the smaller woman. He spoke loudly and clearly in his plummy French accent: he had been taught how to project, after all. ‘Madame, ces nibards sont magnifiques! Votre fils a beaucoup de chance.’

One of the women let out a small shriek and the other reddened instantaneously. The light changed to green and the two pushchairs shot across the road, leaving Stephen chuckling to himself.

He got home and opened the Racing Post to plan his campaign for the day. A horse he had backed unsuccessfully before was running at Uttoxeter. He still fancied it. Difficult one.

The phone rang. Who the hell was that? Bloody people, never gave a chap a moment’s rest.

He picked it up. The phone hissed. ‘Dad? It’s Rupert.’

What the hell did he want? But actually, Stephen could guess. He grunted.

‘I’ve just had Clémence on the phone. From Wyvis.’

‘I know,’ said Stephen. ‘She rang me yesterday. Whose stupid idea was it to send her up there?’

Stephen and his son spoke for ten minutes, which must have been the longest conversation they had had in years. Things were unsatisfactory. Most unsatisfactory.

As Stephen hung up the phone, he thought of Clémence. By and large he didn’t like his grandchildren much, at least the ones he knew, but he had grown fond of Clémence the couple of times he had seen her as a schoolgirl when she had visited him on her way to boarding school. He didn’t want her mixed up in the whole Sophie thing; she would only get hurt like the rest of them.

He stared at the Racing Post on the kitchen table, but he couldn’t concentrate. His eyes were drawn to the half-empty bottle of Scotch he kept in the kitchen. It wasn’t even eleven o’clock. He could wait an hour and a bit until his pint at the Windsor Castle.

He was a bad father. An appalling father. It wasn’t entirely his fault, but he had lost his own children long ago, when he had gone to prison. Fabrice, the eldest, had disappeared entirely for years — contact with him had been minimal. Beatrice, Fabrice’s younger sister, had cut herself off from him, until he had been released. Then she had reintroduced herself. But she was nuts, frankly, and her three children were out of control. She was now in her late fifties and divorced, and who could blame her husband? She lived in Putney somewhere and occasionally took it upon herself to pester her wayward father.

And Rupert, like his older brother, had taken off, but had kept in slightly better touch. Stephen knew Rupert hated him. And he didn’t like Rupert either. So Clémence was the best of the bunch.

Madeleine at least had done what she could to help out her sister’s children, and grandchildren, paying for their education. She could be an interfering old bat, but she had a good heart. Stephen glanced at the photograph on the mantelpiece. Which was lucky: Sophie deserved someone more capable than Stephen to look after her offspring.

Stephen felt his eyes stinging. Angrily, he picked up the paper and forced himself to concentrate on the 2.40 p.m. at Uttoxeter.

The old man returned from his walk to find Clémence in the sitting room, ready to resume the book.

He sat down, apprehensive.

‘All right?’ said Clémence. The old man could tell she, too, was nervous about what she might read.

‘All right.’ The old man nodded.

Clémence opened the book.

We got up in dribs and drabs the following morning. The plan was to have a picnic luncheon at the Villa Damecuta, one of Tiberius’s villas on the other side of Monte Solaro, near the village of Anacapri. Tony tried to take the bus, but it turned out that it was years since Nathan and Madeleine had taken a bus anywhere, and they insisted on two of Capri’s open taxis. The journey was only two and a half miles, but the taxis took twenty minutes to heave their way up the dramatic winding road, somehow ascending what looked like an impassable rampart of rock. Staring at the soft fissures in the cliff, like wrinkles in an old man’s face, I realized that Capri was made of limestone, just like the Dales back home.

I was sitting next to Stephen.

‘I have an apology to make, old man,’ he said.

‘Don’t worry about it. It was a long time ago.’

‘No, it’s important. I promised Sophie I would make it, and I will.’

I listened.

‘I don’t apologize for marrying Sophie, but I behaved like a cad when we were driving down here that summer. Of course I knew how you felt about her. I should have told you right away. It would have been unpleasant, but you would have found out soon enough. Which of course you did. So — sorry.’

I smiled. ‘Apology accepted. Gratefully.’

‘Good,’ he said. ‘Now, does your old mucker Suetonius have anything to say about this place we’re going to?’

‘No idea. I haven’t read Suetonius for a long time.’

‘Glad to hear it. He always struck me as a bit fishy. Even in the original Latin.’

Anacapri was much less sophisticated than Capri town, and it was also a couple of degrees cooler. It was a pleasant walk from the village down through farms and smallholdings of vineyards, olive groves, vegetable gardens and lemon trees. The villa itself turned out to be a pattern of low ruined walls in a field of flowers, grasses and thistles, guarded by a round medieval watchtower. Another cliff edge, another stunning view of Ischia.

Tony had brought along bread, cheese, Italian ham and many bottles of light rosé from Ravello. It was a hot day, but the breeze drifting in from the sea made it bearable. I lay back on one of the walls, closed my eyes and pointed my face towards the sun. Birds chirped lazily from the shrubs behind me. Bees murmured as they plundered the flowers. Butterflies hopped and skipped. Conversation drifted around me in a gentle swirl, interspersed with trickles of laughter.

I let my head loll to the side and opened one eye. Sophie was sitting on a low wall opposite talking to Nathan. She might be thirty and a mother of two, but she was still very pretty. As was Madeleine. Girls in summer dresses at picnics were a good idea, I thought.

Sophie wasn’t mine, and that was all right. There would be other women. There was a student nurse called Gillian with whom I had been out three times. She was much younger than me, but she made me laugh. Not as pretty as Sophie, though. I would have to learn to live with that; most girls just weren’t as pretty as Sophie.

For some reason, just then, she turned quickly to glance at me. She caught my one eye staring at her. I closed it.

‘Hello.’ It was a voice from behind me. An American voice.

I hauled myself up on my elbows. Elaine had sat down on the wall next to me, with a glass half full of rosé. A cigarette was hanging from her open lips. I realized that was why she had struck me as louche. It was her mouth: her full lips that never quite closed. They were sloppy, uneven, sexy.

She puffed at her cigarette. ‘You poor darling,’ she said. ‘You look quite exhausted.’

‘It’s the wine. And the sun. And the view.’

‘Here, let me get you some more.’

I didn’t object and she brought me a glass. We sat in silence looking out over the bay at the mysterious island of Ischia. There was something unsteady about Elaine’s silence.

‘It must be lovely living here,’ I said.

‘It is,’ said Elaine. A pause. ‘It gets a bit dull after a while.’

‘What are the people like?’

‘The expats are all old. Old queers. Old lesbians. They are quite fun in their way but, like I said, it gets dull.’

‘Tony likes it, doesn’t he?’

‘Tony loves it. And I love Tony.’ She sighed. ‘It would be nice to go up to the Riviera. Antibes. Juan. Cap Ferrat.’

‘That shouldn’t be too hard from here.’

‘It shouldn’t be, should it?’ said Elaine. ‘But it turns out we don’t have enough money. I thought Tony had a lot of money. He doesn’t really. And neither do I.’

She didn’t sound bitter. Just disappointed.

‘Shame Uncle Alden gave all his money to those two.’ She nodded at Nathan and Madeleine.

‘He gave some to Tony,’ I said.

‘Yes, he did,’ said Elaine. ‘But he had other nephews and nieces, not just Nathan. Me for instance. He didn’t leave me a bean.’

I didn’t reply. My own opinion was that Alden had realized that Nathan would make something of the family company, but it was probably best not to share that thought with Elaine.

‘It’s ironic really,’ said Elaine. ‘Considering it was Nathan who killed him.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, I suppose it is.’

‘That doesn’t seem quite right. That Nathan should have gotten all the dough.’

‘It was an accident. You were there.’

‘I suppose it was,’ said Elaine in a tone that suggested she supposed it wasn’t. ‘Do I make you uncomfortable?’

‘No,’ I said, lying.

Elaine slowly turned her gaze towards me. Her brown eyes held mine. Her lips lolled, glistened. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes,’ I said, briskly. I pulled out my pipe. ‘Do you mind?’

‘Go ahead,’ said Elaine, turning away from me. ‘I was just hoping you would make Capri a little less dull.’

We went to Gemma’s again that evening for dinner, and then staggered back to Tony’s villa for limoncello, looking out over the moon-striped water far below. Between us, we had put away a lot of alcohol. We were all drunk, all in our different ways.

Madeleine became sleepy. When Elaine began to look ill, she took her up to bed. Or rather to the lavatory. The heave and splatter could be heard down on the terrace, much to Stephen’s amusement.

Stephen was becoming aggressive, his drinking taking on a steady determination. ‘Can I have another one, old man?’ he asked Nathan, after finishing his third or was it fourth limoncello. Nathan poured him a glass. The rest of us refused: Elaine’s retching had introduced some wariness of the sweet yellow liquid around the table.

‘So what was the war like for you, Angus?’ Stephen asked.

‘Oh, you know,’ I said.

‘I’ve had to play all sort of fellows who have been involved in real fighting,’ said Stephen. ‘I find it helps to ask them what it was really like.’

‘Getting thrashed by Rommel was unpleasant,’ I said. I had no intention of ruining my evening by dragging Gazala on to Capri. ‘But I seem to have spent much of the war running away. Playing hide-and-seek with the Jerries in the desert and then in Germany and France.’

‘Can’t you tell us about that?’

‘Actually, I plan to put it in a book,’ I said. ‘When I was in the stalag, I got caught trying to escape in the back of the laundry wagon. They threw me into the cooler for three weeks. I amused myself by trying to write a book in my head, and then memorizing it. I’ve got quite a lot of it down on paper now; I’m surprised by how much I’ve enjoyed writing it. But I’ve no idea if anyone would be interested in reading it.’

‘I would,’ said Tony.

‘Shame you didn’t fight, Nathan,’ Stephen said. ‘In the war.’

‘I feel bad about that,’ said Nathan. ‘But I genuinely thought I could be more help at Wakefield Oil. I think I was probably right.’

‘But Angus fought. And Tony.’

‘You didn’t though, did you, Stephen?’ said Sophie.

‘I joined up. I did my duty. I wore a uniform. I was ready to fight. It wasn’t my fault they put me in front of a camera.’

‘Yes, but you didn’t get shot at, did you?’ said Sophie. ‘You were just the same as Nathan, doing your bit for the war effort.’

Stephen glared at his wife. ‘No, Sophie, it’s entirely different. I was prepared to fight for my country, Nathan wasn’t. It’s as simple as that.’

I found Stephen’s haranguing difficult to listen to. The war had been necessary, but it had been ghastly. It had changed me, damaged me, and millions of others like me, and actually millions totally unlike me: children, mothers, Russians, Germans, Italians. Some had been fortunate never to step over or on to a dead body, never to have been terrified that they were going to be next to die. Nathan seemed to understand that, Stephen didn’t, but I didn’t want to explain it to either of them.

They had benefitted from the war; the conflict had accelerated their careers, and at thirty both men were already successful, yet I had not yet even qualified in mine. That was another difference between us.

‘What about you, Tony?’ Stephen said. ‘You must have seen some action.’

‘I learned to play poker real well for my country. Shall we play now?’

‘I’m not bad at poker,’ said Nathan.

‘I bet you’re not,’ I said.

‘You’re a coward, Nathan,’ said Stephen, glaring at him.

‘Oh, come on, Stephen! This is absurd,’ Sophie said. ‘Especially coming from you.’

‘Oh, be quiet, you stupid woman! I’ve played heroes. I know exactly what it’s like to fight for your country.’

‘Let’s go to bed,’ I said.

Stephen pushed himself to his feet. ‘I said you are a coward! What do you say?’ He was swaying unsteadily. Nathan was alarmed.

I looked at Stephen. I looked at Nathan. I knew what to do. I swung and landed Stephen a clean blow on the chin, sending him crumpling to the ground.

‘Sorry, old man,’ I said to Stephen’s moaning body. I rubbed my knuckles. ‘Let’s get you to bed.’

Tony and I carried Stephen up to bed, with Sophie hovering over us. We got him undressed and lay him down.

‘I’m so sorry,’ said Sophie. ‘That was awful behaviour.’

‘Dangerous drink, limoncello,’ said Tony.

‘Are you all right?’ I asked.

Sophie nodded. ‘I’ll look after him.’

Tony and I tidied up the worst of the debris of empty glasses and bottles outside and then went to bed ourselves. I, as the only single in the group, had a bed made up in a tiny box room on the ground floor.

I undressed and lay on my back, listening to the noises of a Mediterranean night outside my open window.

Then I heard footsteps. And a quiet sob.

I listened. Nothing.

Then another sob.

I swung off the little bed, put on a shirt and trousers and let myself out into the garden.

Sophie was sitting on the floor of the terrace, her back resting against the stone pillars of the balustrade, a tear smearing her left cheek.

She looked up at me and smiled. ‘Hello,’ she said.

‘Hello.’ I sat down next to her.

‘Did I wake you?’

‘No. I wasn’t asleep.’

‘But you heard me?’

‘Only just.’

‘I’m sorry. I just can’t bear to be in the room with him.’

‘That’s not good,’ I said.

They sat in silence for a while. A long while.

‘Do you want to go for a walk?’ said Sophie.

‘Now?’

‘It’s a lovely night. And we can’t just sit here. I’d like to move.’

‘All right. Let me fetch some shoes.’

I sneaked noiselessly back into the house and put on my shoes. We crept around the side of the house and out of the gate into the little road.

‘Uphill or downhill?’ I asked.

‘Uphill.’ And so we set off up the hill, towards the peak at the end of the island and the Villa Jovis.

It was a lovely night. A tiny cloud dallied in front of the moon, which was almost full, scattering its reflection on the sea. The cliff face of Monte Solaro glimmered light grey, its fissures dark slashes. Cypress trees rose tall, black and twisted. The varied unseen scents of blossom from the gardens on either side swirled around us. We were alone, apart from an occasional cat startled on its night hunt.

‘I’m glad you came out to find me,’ said Sophie.

‘You sounded sad.’

‘I am. I wish he hadn’t done that. Bait Nathan. It was so unreasonable. I mean both of them did their stuff for the war effort. We needed oil and we needed morale.’

‘He’s drunk,’ I said. ‘Really drunk.’

‘Did he get like that at Oxford?’ Sophie asked. ‘When you got drunk? Somehow I suspect that you did get drunk every now and then.’

‘We did,’ I said, smiling. ‘And no, not really. He would usually talk, ramble on. I remember he did get in a fight with an idiot called Richardson once. But that was Richardson’s fault. I broke it up.’

‘Is that what you do? Break fights up.’

‘I suppose it is.’

‘That was quite a blow. When you hit Stephen.’

‘I know.’ I shook my hand. ‘It hurts a bit, to be honest.’ We walked in silence for a few moments. ‘Is he often that aggressive now when he’s drunk?’

‘Yes. Yes, he is. I don’t like it.’

‘I’m sure you don’t. He doesn’t hit you, does he?’

‘No! Oh, no,’ said Sophie quickly. ‘But...’

I waited.

‘But sometimes these days I think he might. And he does get drunk rather often.’

‘You mustn’t let him!’ I said. ‘Hit you, I mean.’

‘It doesn’t work like that,’ said Sophie. ‘Have you got a cigarette?’

‘’Fraid not. I’ve got my pipe?’

Sophie laughed. ‘No thanks.’

A cat missing half of its tail darted out of the shadows in front of us, and squeezed itself under a gate into a garden.

‘Stephen was very good when we were first married,’ Sophie said. ‘He wanted to be a good husband and then a good father. He tried really hard. I knew he was tempted. When I visited him on set I could see the way the girls looked at him, but he only had eyes for me.’

‘Stephen’s ambition is to be a reliable man with a reliable job, a reliable wife and two reliable children,’ I said.

‘Yes. That’s why he likes you so much. He talks about you a lot, you know.’

‘I didn’t know,’ I said, but I was pleased to hear it. ‘I have to say I haven’t quite managed the reliable bit yet.’

‘You will, though. You will become the local GP that everyone loves.’

‘Like my father,’ I said. ‘Perhaps I will. I hope I will.’

‘But not like Stephen,’ said Sophie. ‘He tried, he really tried, but he couldn’t do it.’

‘Has he had any affairs?’ I wanted to ask, but didn’t.

But Sophie heard the unspoken question. ‘I know he has been seeing other women. It started when Beatrice was born. One of the make-up ladies, for God’s sake! Then there was an actress on one of the war films he was in. Played his sister. That’s incest, isn’t it? Should be banned.’

‘Have you caught him at it?’

‘No,’ said Sophie. ‘I don’t want to catch him at it. I don’t want to know.’ She sighed. ‘But I do.’

‘I’m sorry.’

We walked on. We were approaching the little drinking fountain halfway up to the Villa Jovis. A cloud covered the moon, and the road became suddenly darker.

‘When he goes to Hollywood for this new film, I know he’s going to start an affair. He won’t be able to help himself.’

‘Should you go with him?’

‘Maybe,’ said Sophie. ‘The idea is that if it’s a success we all move out there. But I don’t want to follow him thousands of miles just to keep an eye on him. That’s not how marriage should be.’

‘I suppose not.’

Sophie laughed.

‘What is it?’

‘I was remembering your warning. I have to say that homosexuality has never been a problem with Stephen.’

I winced. ‘I was rather hoping you had forgotten that.’

‘That’s a difficult one to forget.’ She touched my hand. ‘But I can forgive you.’

‘Thanks,’ I said.

They reached the little fountain and paused for breath. ‘Which way now?’ I said. But I knew what her answer would be.

‘Do you think we can get in to the Villa Fersen?’

‘You mean break in?’

Sophie nodded.

‘We can try.’

It was difficult making our way along the lane through the darkness, especially the last stretch through the pine wood. Sophie took my hand. In a few minutes we reached the big iron gate, which had a big steel padlock on it. To the right, the high garden wall ran steeply upwards: it had deteriorated significantly since our last visit. Sophie peered up and spied a tree growing just a foot or so away from it. ‘Let’s try that.’

It was easy to hop over the wall into the garden: it looked as if we were taking a route that others had followed before. The villa loomed a bluish white in front of us. Several of the windows were broken and a couple were open. We climbed in. The place was a ruin: plaster had fallen from the ceiling and another decade of dust had accumulated. We looked out from the salon at the bay, now moonlit again. Then Sophie led me down to the opium den.

‘I’ve got my pipe,’ I whispered. ‘But Golden Virginia isn’t quite the same, is it?’

Sophie didn’t answer. She reached out and pulled me to her. We kissed.

‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ I said.

‘Quite sure. Aren’t you?’

The moonlight streamed through the window of the den. I knew this was a moment I would remember for ever.

‘I’m sure.’

Afterwards, as we lay on one of the oriental divans in the den and I was running a single finger over Sophie’s naked body, pale and striped in the moonlight, she smiled up at me.

‘I have a request. It’s a completely unfair request. But I hope you will agree to it. I think you might.’

‘What is it?’

‘Promise me we won’t do this again?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean never again.’ She touched my chest. ‘I wanted to do this so badly, ever since I saw you when you arrived yesterday. It seemed, I don’t know, inevitable. But I don’t want to ruin my marriage. I don’t want to hurt my children. I don’t even want to lose Stephen.’ She hesitated. ‘I’m still a Catholic, although obviously not a very good one. I don’t want to sin irrevocably. Leaving Stephen would be irrevocable.’

‘I see,’ I said. And I did, sort of. Although the sinning Catholic bit confused me.

‘It’s dreadful of me,’ Sophie said. ‘And it’s very unfair on you. It’s as if I’m using you. Except—’

‘Except what?’

‘Except I don’t feel that I am. Somehow I think you understand me.’

And I did. I wanted her all to myself, of course I did, but I wanted her to be happy, or at least no more unhappy than she had to be. Years ago I would have leaped at this chance, pleaded, cajoled, pestered her to leave Stephen so she could be mine.

But now?

I had had this night. I didn’t want to ruin her life, my life, Stephen’s life, their children’s lives.

‘I understand,’ I said. ‘I promise.’

Sophie smiled. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Quite sure.’

‘And you’re not going to run away tomorrow morning?’

‘No,’ I shook my head. ‘I’m not going to run away.’

‘And you’re not going to beat up Stephen over breakfast?’

‘I won’t do that either.’

Her smile broadened. I felt myself stir. She reached up to me.

‘Come here.’

10

Tuesday 16 March 1999, Wyvis

The old man watched Clémence shutting the book.

‘What are you smiling at?’ she demanded.

‘It turns out I’m a war hero,’ the old man said. ‘I had absolutely no idea. One of those great British escapees who would run away from anywhere for their country.’

‘Do you remember Capri at all?’

The old man nodded. ‘I do. I can almost see Nathan. And Tony. And I know what the Villa Damecuta looked like.’

‘And the Villa Fersen? Do you remember Sophie in the Villa Fersen?’

‘I do,’ said the old man. He smiled again. That was an evening worth remembering.

‘You know that was my grandpa’s wife you were shagging?’

Anger blazed in Clémence’s big eyes. The pleasure evaporated. If she was angry about that, how much angrier would she be when she discovered that he had killed Sophie in the boathouse? The memory that had struck him as he walked by it the day before had been frighteningly vivid. It must be real. And it must be recorded in a book with the title Death At Wyvis.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It must be difficult for you to learn all this.’

‘It is,’ said Clémence. She glanced at the book closed on her lap. ‘But I’m glad we are reading it. These are things about my family that I want to know, that they should have told me.’

‘Does the next chapter take place at Wyvis?’

Clémence opened the book and flicked forward a couple of pages from where she had saved her place. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘We’re getting near the end.’

The old man nodded.

‘Do you remember what happens next?’ she asked.

‘We’ll see,’ he said, with a sigh. She was staring hard at him, those large blue eyes painfully focused. Despite her anger, the old man liked Clémence. Perhaps it was because she looked a bit like Sophie — those four little freckles on the end of her nose — perhaps it was her youth, her kindness in helping him. He didn’t want to hurt her. To anger her more. But that was unavoidable if she was to read the rest of the book to him. And that was something they both needed to do.

He was alone in the world. She was the only person in his new life whom he knew, or whom he could remember knowing. He didn’t want to lose her.

A memory struck him. ‘I took you for a ride on a camel.’

‘A camel?’ Clémence frowned. ‘I remember that. I was only little.’

‘Very little,’ said the old man. ‘It was in Morocco, wasn’t it? By a beach.’

‘Essaouira,’ said Clémence. ‘We used to go there sometimes when we lived in Marrakech. You came with us once. We played on the beach. I remember that.’

‘And a man came with a camel. You wanted a ride. So we rode on it together. It was very high up for such a little girl. You were very brave.’

‘There were a lot of camel rides in Morocco, not surprisingly,’ Clémence said. ‘I remember we dug a big long ditch together, to channel the water when the tide came in. Or went out.’

‘Your father was there,’ said the old man. ‘Rupert. And maybe your mother, but I can’t remember her.’

‘Tall. Very long dark hair, down to her bum. I loved my mother’s hair,’ said Clémence. ‘But she cut it off three years ago. When Patrick moved in. Now she looks like a banker’s wife.’

‘You can’t be a hippie all your life.’

‘I suppose not,’ said Clémence. ‘It’s good you are remembering things that are not in the book.’

‘Yes. But I can’t remember why I was there. On holiday, I suppose?’

‘I would have been about five,’ Clémence said. ‘So that’s 1984.’

‘When I was living in Australia. I still have no memory of that, apart from the eagles and the Mundaring library. Do I know your parents? I must do, if I went out to see them.’

‘I rang my dad earlier this morning, but he didn’t want to talk to you,’ said Clémence. ‘Or about you. Neither did my grandpa.’

Her words hurt the old man. Just when he was fumbling towards some sort of normal past life, more signs popped up that his old friends didn’t like him. Didn’t want to have anything to do with him. And that they had good reason.

He was alone.

A thought flitted at the edge of his consciousness, like a bat glimpsed at dusk. ‘I have something to discuss with your grandfather. Something important, something I need to show him.’ He frowned and then struck his forehead three times. This was so frustrating! ‘Madeleine will be here this afternoon, you say?’

‘Yes. I don’t know when. She’ll know more about your life than you and me combined.’

‘Yes,’ said the old man.

‘You’re scared, aren’t you?’ said Clémence. There was still anger in her voice, but it was tempered with kindness.

‘I’m scared of the unknown. Or rather, I know there are bad things still to uncover in my life, I just don’t know exactly what they are.’

Clémence stood up and peered out of the window. ‘I’m going for a walk before Aunt Madeleine gets here. I need the fresh air. I’ll make us some lunch when I get back.’

The old man considered asking whether he could join her, but he had the feeling that part of what she wanted to do was to escape him. Besides which, he would slow her down. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘See you later.’

Clémence strode down the track through the woods to the loch. There was no sign of the sun that morning, and the waters of the loch were shades of grey — slate under the rock face of Meall Mòr, mercury in the middle, and near black under the trees by the shore. On the far side of the loch, clouds heavy with moisture, or perhaps snow, clustered around the screes on the upper slopes of the hills. A cold, damp breeze bit at her cheeks, but that felt good after the stuffy sitting room in the cottage. She had found the description of Angus seducing her grandmother, a woman she had never known, unsettling. Even more unsettling when she admitted to herself that it was Sophie who had seduced Angus. Or Alastair. And that her grandfather was hardly a paragon of marital fidelity either.

Her earlier enthusiasm for Madeleine’s arrival was tinged with apprehension. Madeleine would no doubt bring explanations, but also more secrets. She hoped Madeleine was strong enough to take care of the old man herself. An awful thought dawned on her: maybe she would have to take care of both of them.

She wanted someone to take care of her! Or at least show some interest in her. She had thought after her years at boarding school she had become independent, self-reliant. But then she had believed she had a home to go back to, parents who loved her. Turned out that was crap. She didn’t. They didn’t. Welcome to adulthood.

The loneliness made her feel sick, unsteady, as if the ground she was standing on was slowly crumbling away and she was about to pitch into an abyss that was so deep she couldn’t see the bottom.

God she missed Callum! She would have another go at persuading him to come; the old man had said he would be happy to have him staying in the cottage. Of course, they would have to finesse the sleeping arrangements.

She wished she didn’t have to hang around waiting for Madeleine; she felt like driving into a village and buying a pint of milk, just for someone to speak to. Or going into a café. The old man must have gone barmy living all alone up here.

As she reached the shore of the loch, Sheila MacInnes’s white Suzuki approached her coming the other way. Sheila slowed and wound down her window. ‘Hi. What’s the crack today?’ Sheila said.

Clémence wasn’t entirely sure what the crack was. ‘Yeah. Er... yeah,’ she said.

‘How’s it going with Alastair?’

‘Good, I think,’ said Clémence. ‘I’ve been reading that book to him. Death At Wyvis.’

‘Is it working?’

‘I think so,’ said Clémence. ‘He’s definitely remembering stuff. But it’s a bit difficult for both of us.’

‘I’m glad I’ve caught you alone,’ said Sheila, conspiratorially. ‘I went to see Pauline Ferguson yesterday afternoon. You mind I tellt you about her — she was the old stalker’s wife? I explained about Dr Cunningham’s head injury and his amnesia, and how the doctor at the hospital said we should try and jog his memory. She said Dr Cunningham had been to see her a few months ago, asking about that murder in that book you’re reading. She had quite a lot to tell him — something about her son getting a job in America — I didn’t understand it. But she said she’d be happy to talk to him if he wants, if you see what I mean.’

‘Perhaps we should go and see her,’ said Clémence. ‘Maybe tomorrow. My Aunt Madeleine is coming this afternoon. I’m sure she will be able to tell us a lot.’

‘All right, then. Pauline is at Ashwood House nursing home. It’s in Dingwall, just on this side of town. Now, I’m just away up to Culzie and tidy up a bit for you.’

‘Oh, don’t worry about that,’ said Clémence. ‘I can do it.’

‘Och, it’s no trouble, pet. Enjoy your walk.’ With that Sheila drove off up the track through the woods to the cottage.

Clémence rounded the curve in the loch and Corravachie came into view. Jerry Ranger’s blue car was parked outside, and there was smoke coming out of the chimney. Jerry himself seemed to be examining the loch with his binoculars — bird watching, presumably, although he seemed to be ignoring the exotically plumaged ducks that were dabbling right in front of him. Clémence considered turning round, but then she thought it would be nice to chat to someone. Americans were usually friendly, and his song-writing intrigued her.

Jerry must have felt the same way, because he spotted her walking along the track and came out to meet her. ‘Would you like a cup of coffee? I still have some of my stock of Peet’s left.’

‘Peat?’ Clémence was confused. Was peat coffee some new Scottish delicacy? They said fried Mars bars were a myth, but Clémence believed in them. ‘How do you use peat in coffee?’

‘Not peat, Peet’s,’ said Jerry with a grin. ‘Best coffee in California. At least I think so. There are folks who would argue with me.’ He smiled to himself. ‘There’s always folks who want to argue with me.’

‘OK,’ said Clémence. ‘I’ll try some.’

Jerry’s kitchen was well equipped with food and coffee. He put on the kettle to boil and set about grinding beans. ‘Have you ever had Oreos? I got a stash of those as well. For special occasions.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Clémence. ‘I’ve never been to America.’

‘You should go. Go out west. See the national parks. Yosemite. Zion — that’s in Utah. I think that’s my favourite. Too many people just go to the cities in the States: New York or Washington. I wouldn’t live in LA myself unless I had to to get work. I much prefer it out here.’

‘Don’t you get lonely?’ Clémence said. ‘I’ve only been here two days and it’s getting to me already.’

‘Loneliness. Solitude. All depends how you look at it. Alastair knows. He likes it up here.’

‘Does he?’ said Clémence. ‘I suppose he does remember Loch Glass and Wyvis. And he likes to walk around.’

‘You got to admit it’s beautiful.’

‘I admit it.’

‘How’s his memory coming along?’

‘Very well,’ Clémence said. ‘I mean, he still has a long way to go, but it’s coming back fast. We have been reading that book I showed you together, and he’s remembering stuff in that. And just now he remembered visiting us when I was a little girl in Morocco. That came out of the blue.’

‘That’s good,’ said Jerry.

‘My aunt is coming to see us this afternoon. She knew him throughout his life. I expect that will help a lot.’

‘Good. Why don’t you go through to the living room?’ said Jerry. ‘Sorry it’s a bit of a mess in there. I’ll bring the coffee through in a moment. Here, take these.’

He handed Clémence a plate of round dark sandwich biscuits, and a small jug of milk, and she went through to the sitting room.

There was an old sofa, an armchair and all kinds of electronic music-making equipment, including an acoustic guitar and a keyboard. A computer nestling in pages of notes rested on the desk by the window overlooking the loch. A landscape of a Scottish castle hung from one wall, and a bookcase stood against the other. It was sparsely populated: a guide to Scottish birds, a John Grisham thriller, a rhyming dictionary, a French novel by Pascale Roze, and then a very familiar cover. Death At Wyvis. What the hell was that doing there? Maybe it came with the cottage.

But Jerry had acted as if he hadn’t recognized her copy the day before.

She took the book down off the shelf; it had been read. She flipped open the pages. Passages were underlined with little notes scribbled in the margin. Had Jerry written those? Or had they been inscribed by a previous occupant of the cottage?

Just then Jerry bustled in with two mugs of coffee. He raised his eyebrows when he saw the book in Clémence’s hand. She could feel herself blush. She tried to stop herself, but you can’t do that — her face just felt hotter.

She tried to brazen it out. ‘This is the book I’ve been reading to Alastair,’ she said.

‘Oh. I should take a look. Here’s the coffee.’

‘Mmm. Smells delicious.’ She took a sip. ‘Tastes good too.’ Was that Jerry’s handwriting? Clémence had an idea. She drifted over to his desk and picked up one of the sheets. ‘Is this a new song?’ she asked.

It was his handwriting!

‘Yeah, it’s coming on nicely. I think I’m going to come up with some really cool material while I’m here.’

‘The Wyvis Album?’ said Clémence, replacing the sheet.

Jerry smiled. ‘Hey! That’s not a bad title.’

‘Shit!’

Jerry watched Clémence walking back to Culzie, his earlier complacency shattered.

Alastair Cunningham was remembering fast. And there was a lot he knew that Jerry could not afford to come to light.

He poured himself the rest of the coffee and took it outside to the rock by the shore of the loch. It was cold, but he didn’t care. He needed to make a decision. Fast.

All right. There was a chance that Alastair would remember Jerry visiting him the week before. Remember being pushed down the stairs. But then again, there was a chance that would never come back. Jerry couldn’t be sure what the old guy would remember and what was gone for ever. And even if he did remember, it would be difficult to prove murder in court. The forensic evidence would be messed up by now. Jerry could claim he had visited Alastair the day before he fell, and that Alastair was confused. It would be Jerry’s word against Alastair’s, a befuddled old man with a head injury.

But then Jerry’s own criminal record would come to light. Would that matter? Because Jerry had already spent time in jail, for manslaughter. It had happened in 1973 in the dive in Echo Park he shared with his girlfriend. He and Wendy were fighting, as usual. Then they had patched it up in the usual way, with heroin. Except she had somehow taken it twice. Or, rather, Jerry had given it to her twice. Or maybe three times. That was what he thought, and that was what he had stupidly told the police. The DA had offered manslaughter and Jerry’s dumb lawyer had persuaded him to plead guilty. But sentencing hadn’t gone as planned: the judge didn’t like long-haired song-writing drug addicts and thought Los Angeles would be better off without Jerry for a while. A long while. He hadn’t gotten out of the state penitentiary until 1984.

He had gotten to know a lot of other manslaughterers inside. And murderers. Some of them were evil, many of them weren’t. It was surprising how many men you met who had shot their wives with the gun kept in the bedside drawer and then regretted it for ever afterwards. Those were the kind of guys Jerry liked to hang out with inside. That was the kind of guy he was.

He really didn’t want to go through all that again.

OK. So there was a chance that he might avoid a murder rap for the fall on the stairs. But then there was all the other stuff that Alastair knew. That he might want to tell the police about. There was a lot a diligent Scottish detective could discover if he put his mind to it. And Jerry hadn’t liked the look on the girl’s face when she had been leafing through that book. She would soon start putting two and two together herself.

The previous fall, Jerry had decided to take action. He couldn’t back out now. There was a job to finish. And to finish quickly before it was too late, preferably before the aunt arrived.

There was the rifle locked in the gun cupboard at Culzie. Since Jerry didn’t have a British firearms certificate, in theory he was only supposed to use it under the supervision of Terry, the stalker. And if he did use it to kill Alastair, it wouldn’t take a Sherlock MacHolmes very long to figure out who was responsible.

That was a last resort. There was still his other idea that might work if he was lucky. But he would have to be quick.

He checked his watch. It was about twenty minutes since Clémence had left — she should be almost back to Culzie now, so he wouldn’t pass her. He made a quick phone call, then grabbed his binoculars, jumped in his car and drove to the spot he had occupied earlier that morning.

The clouds were building ominously above Ben Wyvis. Alastair liked to walk — he usually ventured outside at least twice a day — but snow would stop him. Jerry just had to hope that the old man decided to get a walk in before it started to snow.

11

Stephen rewound the video and pressed ‘Play’ for the third time. On the screen Sophie smiled at him, and little Rupert waved at Daddy. Then he ran across the lawn kicking a blue football, Sophie walking along after him. Then came the moment that hurt most. She turned and smiled at him. Just at him, the man holding the camera.

God, she was beautiful. And she loved him. How could he ever have lost her?

Of course, it wasn’t directly his fault, which was something he had always known even if no one else had. But there were things he could have done. He should have treated her better. He should have dealt with Alastair. He should never have suggested that they all went to Wyvis. So many things he should have done differently.

The tears ran down his cheeks. These phone calls the last couple of days from Clémence and from Rupert had opened up old wounds.

But if Madeleine and Clémence and Alastair were all reading that damned book together, there would be trouble. Perhaps he should face it. Perhaps he should go up to Scotland and face it — face them.

No, damn them! They didn’t need him, and he didn’t need them. Sophie was just a set of images on a VHS tape transferred from old eight-millimetre film. She was gone. In a few years, maybe only a couple of years, he would be gone too.

In the meantime there was a crossword to be done.

Half an hour later, he was sipping his Guinness in the Sherry Bar at the Windsor Castle.

‘Will you bloody concentrate, Stephen?’ Maitland said. ‘Three across. “Bachelor girl in Spanish-speaking country”. Seven letters. I thought “senorita” but that’s eight. Is it an anagram of somewhere in South America?’

‘Sorry, Maitland,’ said Stephen. ‘My mind was wandering. I think I’m going to get on a train to Scotland.’

‘What the hell do you want to do that for?’ said Maitland. ‘It’s March. The weather is abominable in Scotland in March.’

‘Bloody children,’ said Stephen. ‘And grandchildren. And interfering sisters-in-law.’

‘Sod the lot of them,’ said Maitland. ‘In the meantime, what about this senorita?’

Sheila had been and gone by the time Clémence got back to Culzie. In that time she had cleaned the kitchen and bathroom and put some soup on the hob. Clémence felt grateful, embarrassed and irritated in equal measure — she had fancied a ham-and-cheese toastie for lunch.

‘What’s it like out?’ the old man asked.

‘Cold,’ said Clémence. ‘I think it might rain. Or maybe snow.’

‘Did you see anything?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I don’t know. Deer? An eagle, perhaps?’

‘I saw your neighbour, Jerry Ranger.’

‘How is he?’

‘Fine.’

Clémence wasn’t sure what to think about Jerry, but she didn’t want to discuss him with the old man. There was something not right about the American. Who was he? And why was he interested in Death At Wyvis? And, most importantly, why hadn’t he admitted his interest when Clémence had shown him the book the day before?

A lot of what he said did add up. Although Jerry Ranger sounded like a fake name, it sounded like the kind of fake name someone would pick if they wanted to become a singer. Kind of like Johnny Cash, although maybe that was a real name? Anyway, Jerry clearly was a real song writer — she had seen his scribblings and heard him sing — and he had got to know the old man over the couple of weeks before his fall. But now Clémence came to think of it, Jerry’s questions about how much the old man had forgotten seemed to be driven by a little more than just curiosity or concern.

She thought about asking the old man about him, but there was no point. He wouldn’t have a clue, and she wasn’t in the mood for an awkward conversation. Next time she saw Sheila, she would ask her. She’d know something, and she was always happy to talk.

‘By the way,’ she said, ‘did Sheila say anything to you about Pauline Ferguson, the woman who used to work on the estate?’

‘Yes, she did,’ said the old man. ‘Apparently I spoke to her quite recently.’

‘Do you want to see her? We could go to Dingwall tomorrow morning.’ It would be good to see civilization again, Clémence thought.

‘Yes, thank you,’ said the old man. ‘I would like to do that.’ His gratitude was endearing but also irritating.

Clémence went back to her soup. The old man cleared his throat. ‘I’ve been thinking about what you said about your mother and that man Patrick.’

‘Oh, yes?’ Part of Clémence wished that she hadn’t mentioned it to the old man. But part of her was glad she had, glad that someone was interested.

‘Yes. It’s appalling. Completely unfair. I suppose I can see why your mother might believe the toad, but I don’t understand your father.’

Clémence was just about to spoon some soup into her mouth as he said this. Suddenly she couldn’t swallow, and she felt a tear leak down her cheek. It took her by surprise. Clémence hardly ever cried; one of the things you learned at boarding school was how not to cry.

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ said the old man. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you, I really didn’t.’

‘I know you didn’t,’ said Clémence.

‘I’d say don’t cry,’ said the old man, in a soft voice. ‘But, actually, maybe you should.’

Clémence tried to smile, almost succeeded, but then the tears came, flowing strongly.

Slowly, carefully, the old man reached his hand over the table. Clémence moved hers towards him and he held it.

She sobbed. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be sorry, Clémence.’

‘The trouble is, Dad has this new girlfriend in Vietnam, and she doesn’t want me around. I visited them last summer and it was a disaster.’ Clémence sniffed. ‘So I can’t go there either. And that’s why Dad won’t listen to me.’

‘You poor girl!’ The old man gripped her hand. ‘Look. Why don’t we fly over to Hong Kong together, and I’ll sort this bastard Patrick out? And his accomplice Reginald.’

‘How are you going to do that?’

‘I’ll go armed. Walking stick or Zimmer frame? Can’t decide. I’ll take out Reginald first and then deal with Patrick. He won’t be expecting it — he’ll think I’m a feeble old man.’

Clémence smiled. ‘Aren’t you a feeble old man?’

‘Certainly not! I remember scoring a try against Ampleforth as though it was yesterday. I’m sure I can take him down.’

Clémence grinned, sniffed and wiped her eyes. ‘It’s very good of you to offer, but it is a long way to go for a fight that you probably wouldn’t win.’

‘I can go,’ said the old man. ‘Seriously. I don’t have anything else to do. May as well go to Hong Kong. And someone needs to stand up for you if your parents won’t.’

‘What about money? How would you pay?’

‘I’ve got a wallet with three credit cards in it. We could see how they work.’ He leaned forward. ‘You know, Clémence. It’s a ridiculous thing to say, but you are the person I know best in the world. At least you are the only person I know that I can remember. So certainly I’ll fly to Hong Kong to beat up your mother’s boyfriend.’

Clémence shook her head. She believed that the old man might actually do it. She was also sure it would be a total waste of time.

‘Maybe we should talk to your Aunt Madeleine about it?’ he said. ‘Maybe she can persuade them you are telling the truth. She sounds like a capable woman.’

‘She certainly is,’ said Clémence. ‘And she’s quite capable of bossing my parents around. I’m just not sure they would listen. And—’

‘And what?’

‘I’d be ashamed to tell her.’

‘You have nothing to be ashamed of, Clémence. Do you understand me? Nothing.’

He was right. The old man was right. And Aunt Madeleine was always on her side. ‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘Yes, I do understand.’

‘Good,’ said the old man. ‘Now how about some Scrabble? I used to be very good at Scrabble. Who knows now? But I’d like to find out. We could treat it as a memory exercise.’

‘I’m not bad at Scrabble myself,’ said Clémence. ‘But do we have a board?’

‘In the cupboard in the sitting room.’

‘You remember?’

‘I remember.’

So they left the washing up and got the Scrabble out. The old man was indeed good, his memory for words seemed not to be damaged one jot, and he took an early lead. Clémence played well and managed to stay in contention. But as they were getting down to the last tiles, she was still forty-two points behind, with only seven low-scoring letters left. Then she suddenly spotted it: ATELIER. Fifty-point bonus for seven letters! She placed the tiles with a flourish.

‘I’ve won!’

‘Atelier?’ the old man drew his bushy eyebrows together. ‘That’s a French word.’

‘No it’s not.’

‘Of course it is. The English word is “workshop”. You’re just confused because you’re French.’

‘Hah! I’ve just won because I’m French you mean. Haven’t you heard of the atelier tradition?’

‘You mean la tradition atelier?’

‘No, I mean the atelier tradition! It’s a way of teaching art. I’ve won and you know it!’

‘All right,’ said the old man. ‘You won. But I’ll get my revenge.’

They put the game back in its box and then the old man pulled himself to his feet. ‘Do you mind if I go out myself, before we start on the book again?’

‘Go ahead,’ said Clémence. ‘I’ll clear up the kitchen.’ She looked outside. ‘It still looks like it’s going to rain or snow or something. Don’t go too far.’

‘I’ll be OK,’ said the old man. He put on his coat and stomped out of the door.

As Clémence loaded the dishwasher, she was grinning to herself over her Scrabble victory. She couldn’t wait to tell Callum — he was a keen Scrabble player.

The grin disappeared as she remembered what they had to read together that afternoon. Maybe the old man was as nervous as she was, playing for time by suggesting Scrabble and going out for a walk. But the book had to be finished.

She thought about those last couple of chapters that took place in Capri; maybe she would go there some day. With Callum this summer perhaps, by Interrail, if their relationship lasted that long. She hoped it would.

Then she froze. A thought had struck her, a ridiculous thought, a thought she wanted to ignore, to destroy, to unthink.

But she couldn’t.

She ran up the stairs to the old man’s study, pulled out the album and stared at the photograph.

There was no doubt. Clémence was not who she thought she was at all.

She had no idea how long she sat on the study floor, cross-legged, with the old album open in front of her, before she heard the sound of a car drawing up outside.

She left the album and ran down the stairs. It was a taxi with a Dingwall phone number emblazoned on its side.

She flung open the front door and saw a small old lady, with black hair and a walking stick, being helped out of the back seat by the driver.

‘Tante Madeleine!’ she cried, and threw herself into the old lady’s arms.

‘Clémence, my dear!’ Madeleine exclaimed as she hugged her great-niece. ‘My, that was a welcome!’ she said in French as they eventually broke away.

Clémence hadn’t seen her aunt for a couple of years. She looked a little older, a little frailer with the walking stick. But she still had the big friendly brown eyes, and the wide smile. Under a fur-lined coat, she was dressed in trousers, a plaid waistcoat and her trademark Hermès scarf around her neck. Discreet jewels glimmered from her ears and on her fingers and the myriad of wrinkles across her face were softened with careful make-up.

‘Shall I tell Davie here to come back and fetch me at five?’ Madeleine asked.

‘Do you want to stay here? We have room.’

‘Oh, no,’ said Madeleine, shuddering at the thought. ‘I’ll be much better in a hotel in Dingwall. I’ve already checked in.’

‘Then five will be fine.’

Madeleine gave instructions to the taxi driver, who seemed happy to do anything his passenger asked, sensing that he would be making a lot more than whatever was on the meter from the afternoon’s work.

‘Let me show you the cottage,’ said Clémence.

Madeleine admired Culzie’s warmth and cosiness, Clémence put another log on the fire, and they sat in the sitting room.

‘Where is Alastair?’ Madeleine asked.

‘He’s gone for a walk. He should be back in half an hour or so.’

‘That’s good he can go walking. How is he?’

‘Physically, he is fine. He just needs some stitches out of the back of his head. And his memory is coming back. Slowly.’

‘So he really has forgotten everything? The poor man!’

‘Yes,’ said Clémence. ‘The poor guy doesn’t know who he really is. But, as I said, it’s beginning to return.’ She picked up the book by her chair. ‘We’ve been reading this.’

Madeleine’s hand flew to her mouth. ‘Oh, my dear! What a place to start! That is a horrible book!’

Clémence had been pinning her hopes on Madeleine arriving, taking over from her, and making everything all right. But for the first time the reality of Madeleine’s role in the story they had been reading became clear. Sophie was Clémence’s grandmother, whom she had never met. She was also Madeleine’s little sister, with whom Madeleine had grown up.

Oh, God. Two old people who were going to flip.

Clémence thought she had better explain. ‘I found a manuscript in this room written by Alastair. It was written in the first person, and the title was Death At Wyvis. Then I found this published book on the bookshelf, written by an Angus Culzie. Same book, but the protagonist is a man called Angus. But that’s Alastair, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, it’s him,’ said Madeleine. ‘How much of it have you read?’

‘I’ve read the prologue. Where Sophie... your sister... gets killed. By Angus. Or Alastair. Or whoever he is. But I have only read to Alastair from the beginning of chapter one, which takes place in Paris. He doesn’t know about the murder, or at least I think he doesn’t.’

‘Have you got to the last section. In Wyvis?’

‘Just about to read it. This afternoon.’

‘Oh, my poor Clémence! When I sent you to look after him, I didn’t mean that you should have to go through all this.’

‘Is it true?’ said Clémence.

Madeleine nodded.

‘All of it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then Alastair killed your sister?’

Madeleine hesitated, and then nodded again.

Clémence sighed. ‘It has been very hard this last couple of days knowing that Alastair is a killer. He seems like a sweet old man.’

‘I’m sure,’ said Madeleine. ‘But—’

‘I am learning a lot about my family. My grandmother. And grandfather for that matter. And you.’

‘Not all of it good, I’m afraid.’

‘Why didn’t any of you tell me anything? I knew nothing!’

Madeleine’s big brown eyes were full of sympathy. ‘Your father forbade me to. As did your grandfather.’ She winced. ‘When you read the rest of the book, perhaps you will understand.’

‘It gets worse?’

‘It does.’

Clémence blew air through her cheeks. The book scared her, but at least now she had an ally in her aunt. ‘Do you hate Alastair? For killing your sister?’

Madeleine reached for the scarf at her neck and twisted it. ‘I used to. I probably still do. Maybe I have forgiven him, I don’t know. When the hospital called and said he had no one, I thought I should come over and help. And thank you for doing what you have been doing yourself, my dear.’

‘When did you last see him?’

‘Last autumn. He visited us in New York.’ She hesitated. ‘It was a painful visit. It upset Nathan.’

‘I’m sorry about Uncle Nathan,’ Clémence said.

‘Thank you.’ Madeleine smiled quickly. ‘We were married a long time. He was a wonderful man. Life is different without him.’

‘Aunt Madeleine? Before Alastair comes back, can I show you something?’

‘Certainly, my dear,’ said her aunt, grateful for the change of subject.

Clémence nipped upstairs and grabbed the photograph album. She brought it back downstairs and opened it at the picture of Alastair and Stephen in a quadrangle in Oxford. ‘Who does that remind you of?’

Yes! He had been waiting and watching for over an hour, but then Jerry saw the old man emerge from the woods and strike out across the hillside. Immediately, Jerry set out on foot along the loch towards the woods, clutching his binoculars as alibi. A beaten-up Land Rover drove past and Jerry waved to its occupant, Terry MacInnes, the stalker, on his way to Wyvis Lodge at the head of the loch.

Slow down. Jerry had to time this accurately. He followed the smaller track that branched uphill from the loch towards Culzie, but a hundred yards or so before the cottage he broke off into the woods and cut across the slope. It was hard work — the slope was steep, there were stones and boulders everywhere and every surface was covered in a variety of mosses and lichens in shades of green ranging from grey to bright yellow. Jerry had to cling on to branches to prevent himself from slipping.

Good.

He passed the first path directly down to the boathouse from the cottage, but fought his way through the wood to a second narrower route, which Jerry knew the old man liked to take. Having read Death At Wyvis many times, it didn’t surprise Jerry that Alastair wanted to avoid the boathouse.

When he reached the second path, he scrambled up it for a few yards until he arrived at a slightly flatter point, just above some rocks. Perfect.

He sat on a fallen trunk, took out his field glasses, focused on a non-existent woodpecker and waited.

After about twenty minutes he heard the sound of boots on rock and heavy breathing below him. He peered down and saw the top of the old man’s head making its way slowly up the slope, the scar clearly visible through his close-cropped white hair. The old man was finding it difficult, but he was determined. He slipped and swore, then continued his climb until he was almost upon Jerry. The old man was concentrating so much on where he was putting his feet that he hadn’t noticed him.

‘Alastair! Hi! That’s some climb you’re doing there.’

The old man looked up, saw Jerry and smiled. He continued the last few steps, panting heavily, and joined Jerry.

‘Whew!’ he said. ‘That’s not easy at my age.’

‘I’m impressed!’ said Jerry. ‘I’ll be happy if I am half as fit as you when I’m eighty.’

‘What were you looking at?’ the old man said, nodding to the binoculars.

‘Woodpecker. Great spotted, I think.’

‘I didn’t hear him.’

‘Didn’t you?’ said Jerry, realizing he had made a minor mistake. But it didn’t really matter what he said to the old man, because this time he would make quite sure that the old man would never get the chance to repeat it.

The slope below was perfect. One push and the old man would tumble ten to fifteen feet down the path, banging his head on several likely rocks on the way. This time Jerry would follow him down to make sure he was dead, and not just unconscious.

And then he would raise the alarm, probably by running up to Culzie. A thorough forensic analysis was highly unlikely — who wouldn’t believe that the old man had slipped and fallen on such difficult terrain? — but there were bound to be traces of Jerry’s presence, a presence that could best be explained by him discovering the body.

The trouble was that the old man had moved a couple of feet away from the path and was resting against a tree trunk. From that position, Jerry could probably lift him bodily and fling him down the slope. But the old man might cling to his sleeve, or start yelling, or create some signs of a struggle. A clean push would be much better. Which meant the old man would have to be persuaded to budge a foot or two.

Jerry whipped his binoculars up to his eyes and pointed them at a tree lower down. ‘Yes! Look! Down there!’

‘What is it?’ The old man was still panting, reluctant to move.

Jerry almost said ‘woodpecker’, but something more was needed. ‘A golden eagle. Man, is he beautiful! Here. Take a look.’

He held the binoculars out for the old man to come and get.

Just then he heard a car heading up the track above the pathway towards Culzie.

The old man took the glasses. Jerry took a step back.

The car stopped. The engine cut out. Jerry heard a car door slam.

Now! If he pushed now, the old man would hurtle down the slope. He might cry out, which would alert whoever was on the track above. That would be OK — the sound of someone slipping and falling. But Jerry wouldn’t get the chance to finish off the old man if he had to.

Better wait for whoever it was to walk off, wherever he was planning to go.

The old man was scanning the trees. ‘I don’t see anything.’

Above them, Jerry could clearly hear the sound of someone descending the path. In a few moments Terry MacInnes appeared.

‘Ah, it’s you two!’ he said. ‘I didn’t know who it was in the woods.’

‘Hey there, Terry!’ said Jerry, hiding a flash of frustration. Come on — did the guy really think they were poachers?

‘Jerry.’ The stalker nodded at him and then approached the old man, who put down his binoculars. ‘Dr Cunningham. It’s good to see you up and about.’

The old man smiled. ‘I’m sorry, I’m afraid I have no memory of who you are. But my guess is you are Sheila’s husband, the stalker?’

‘Aye, that’s me. Sheila told me all about your amnesia.’

The moment was lost. Jerry was furious; it was all he could do to restrain himself from tossing them both down the path. He bade them goodbye and set off down through the trees towards the loch. He hurried back to the car and his own cottage as soon as he could.

He went straight to the gun cupboard and unlocked it. He took down the rifle and the box of ammunition.

No more pissing about. He needed to be certain and he needed to be fast.

‘Hello!’

Clémence put the photograph album down beside the sofa. ‘Hi!’

‘It’s crowded out there,’ the old man called from the hallway. ‘I saw Jerry, and then Terry MacInnes, Sheila’s husband. Nice chap, really, but a bit taciturn—’

He came into the sitting room and saw their guest. He smiled.

‘Madeleine! How good it is to see you! Thank you for coming all this way.’

Madeleine hesitated and then kissed him on both cheeks. ‘Hello, Alastair,’ she said. ‘I am glad to see you looking so well.’

Madeleine’s accent when speaking English — heavy French with American vowels — took Clémence by surprise. Suddenly she seemed like a foreigner, whereas while they had both been speaking French they had seemed very much of the same family.

‘And thank you for persuading Clémence to look after me,’ said the old man. ‘She has been fantastic.’

He stood there, his grey hair dishevelled by the wind, his craggy cheeks ruddy from the cold, smiling at both of them. Clémence couldn’t help thinking he looked adorable.

‘She is fantastic,’ said Madeleine smiling at Clémence. ‘I have heard you are making good progress. Do you recognize me?’

‘No. But we have been reading Death At Wyvis; I’m sure you have read it. But it means that I feel I know you. I’ve heard all about you, and I can remember you as a young woman. So you are almost a familiar face. And you have no idea how nice that is.’

Madeleine smiled, but without her habitual warmth. ‘Yes, I have read that book.’

‘I’m sure there is a lot you can tell me about the mystery that is my life,’ said the old man. ‘But perhaps we ought to finish the book first. Would you like to join us?’

‘Oh, no,’ said Madeleine. ‘I couldn’t bear it.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ said the old man. ‘Of course not. You have travelled thousands of miles to get here. We can read it later. Tonight perhaps, or tomorrow?’ He glanced at Clémence.

Or never, perhaps, thought Clémence. She was scared of what was in there.

Madeleine looked at the old man and the young woman. And she sighed.

‘No. I think you are right. We cannot have a proper conversation until you both know what is in that book. I suggest Clémence reads it now. And I will stay and listen.’

Clémence and the old man exchanged glances. Like her, he seemed to know that whatever was in that book was bad. And, like her, he couldn’t hide from it.

‘All right,’ said Clémence, picking up the novel and taking her place in the armchair.

She opened the book, and began to read.

CHAPTER IX

Wyvis

Knaresborough, West Riding of Yorkshire, June 1959

IT WAS ONLY a brisk ten-minute walk from the surgery on the high street to my little house overlooking the river and underlooking the railway viaduct. I liked to nip back home for lunch, believing the break from the surgery did me good. I felt a glow of satisfaction from my last patient of the morning, a four-year-old boy who had made a complete recovery from meningitis. When I had been called out to the boy’s home two weeks before, I had been sure I was going to lose him.

There were two envelopes on the mat, a missive from the RAC and a letter from New York. Nathan and I had kept up a steady correspondence for many years now, writing back and forth every couple of months. They were long letters, which mixed anecdote and gossip with more profound thoughts on the direction our lives were taking, and the choices we were making. We had taken to discussing our work: I described interesting patients or awkward problems with my partners at the practice, and Nathan wrestled with the opportunities and risks of the swiftly growing oil business. I derived a deep pleasure from the correspondence, and I knew that Nathan did too.

I made myself a ham-and-cheese sandwich with Mrs Clapham’s home-made piccalilli and opened the letter. It was uncharacteristically short.

Why not? I usually didn’t take time off in the school holidays; my two partners had school-aged children and I was happy to let them have first choice of dates, but I was pretty sure they should both be back at work by the middle of August.

I had seen Nathan the year before, when I had travelled down to London to meet him on one of his business trips, and we had lunched at the Savoy. And Madeleine and Nathan had stayed with me in Knaresborough in 1955. But I hadn’t seen Stephen since Capri.

Nor Sophie.

I had been tempted to visit Sophie in 1947 right after Capri. Stephen was in Hollywood, and she was in Twickenham with the children. I had been so tempted.

But I had promised. If I had tried to see her then, and she had let me, her family would have been blown apart. I would have had Sophie for myself, but I had promised, and after the fool I had made of myself before the war, I wanted to keep that promise. I had gone to great lengths to do so, even becoming engaged to Gillian, the student nurse at Bart’s. Fortunately for both of us, I had eventually realized that avoiding the temptation of another woman was a really bad reason for marriage, and the engagement had fizzled out.

But now, twelve years later, it would be safe to meet. Sophie would be forty-three now: fat probably, matronly. Stephen, I knew, was still handsome, but in his last film his dangerous charm had changed subtly to aggressive smarm. It would be good to see them, and Tony, whom a bored Elaine had left three years before. No mention of her.

I grabbed pen and writing paper and dashed off a quick reply. Yes, I would love to come.

I took the sleeper up to Inverness and then on to the little station of Novar, which was actually in the village of Evanton. There I was pleased to see Nathan and a chubby Tony waiting for me.

‘Thought we’d both come down and get you,’ said Nathan, pumping my hand. ‘Like the last time.’ He was tanned, his neat dark hair was flecked with grey at the edges, although his moustache was still black and his brown eyes as sharp as ever. He was wearing a light tweed suit but with plus fours, not a kilt, thank God; I wasn’t sure I could have stood Nathan in a kilt. Tony was wearing slacks, an old cotton shirt and a big grin.

Nathan carried my bag to an old Bentley parked in the small station car park.

‘This is very grand,’ I said. ‘Is it yours?’ I could see Nathan owning a Bentley, but I didn’t see how he could have got a car to Britain.

‘No, it comes with the estate. It belongs to Stephen’s father. One of the ghillies doubles as a chauffeur, but I persuaded him to let me drive it.’

‘I don’t remember Stephen talking about a Scottish estate.’ Stephen’s family had made its fortune in the previous century out of polish and related cleaning goods. This had bought them a manor house in Wiltshire and Stephen his education at Eton and Oxford, but he hadn’t mentioned any visits to the Highlands.

‘His father inherited it ten years ago from Stephen’s great-uncle. I think Stephen has only been there a couple of times.’

‘It was good of his father to let us have it.’

‘Oh, I’m renting it for the week,’ said Nathan. I raised my eyebrows; that seemed a touch mercenary on the part of Stephen’s family.

‘Don’t worry — it’s fine,’ said Nathan. ‘In fact, I think it’s a great idea. And the estate staff are pleased as punch to have the English laird’s film-star son here. We plan to go stalking tomorrow. Do they do that kind of thing in Yorkshire?’

‘No. Massacring birds is their thing,’ I said.

Nathan piloted the Bentley through Evanton, and up a steep wooded glen. ‘That’s the River Glass down there,’ he said. ‘It flows down from Loch Glass and Wyvis Lodge.’

‘What on earth are you doing in Scotland?’ I asked. ‘There’s no oil up here, is there?’

‘There may well be. In the North Sea. And there’s definitely gas. It might be the next bonanza, if we can figure out how to get it out. I’ve been talking to geologists, trying to decide whether Wakefield Oil should get involved.’

‘Bit of a risk, isn’t it?’

Nathan grinned. ‘Absolutely. But, like I’m always telling you, the oil business is all about risk: if you don’t take risk, you don’t make money. The trick is to take the right risks, and to make sure they don’t bankrupt you if they go wrong.’

Wakefield Oil was not going bankrupt. Five years before, I had found a way of investing five hundred pounds of my savings in the stock of the company quoted on the New York Stock Exchange, since when it had quadrupled. I wasn’t planning to sell; I would stick with Nathan.

‘How’s Capri, Tony?’ I asked. ‘I hope you are still painting?’

‘Definitely. But it’s quite a while since I painted a rotten eggplant. I’m selling a bunch of pictures to the tourists. They pay top dollar, especially the Germans.’

‘I’m sorry to hear about Elaine.’

‘I’m not,’ said Tony. ‘She gave me an ultimatum. Get a proper job and leave Capri, or she would walk out. Wasn’t a difficult decision, really. Now she’s making some other sap unhappy; a lawyer in Chicago. And I have a housekeeper called Luciana. A widow from the war.’ Tony grinned. ‘She sees to my needs.’

‘Capri really is an island of sin, isn’t it?’ said Nathan.

‘Oh I don’t know. She’s happy. I’m happy. Life’s OK.’

We crossed the River Glass on a wooden bridge right next to a lodge, and entered the estate. Eventually we broke out of the woods and Loch Glass and Ben Wyvis opened up before us. It was a warm day and the heather glowed orange in the August sun. I had always loved the moors in Yorkshire, and this one made my heart sing. If this weather held up, it would be a tremendous few days.

We drove along the edge of the water, a deep royal blue in the sunshine, rounded a curve to the left and arrived at a large Victorian stockbroker’s house, squatting at the head of the loch twenty yards back from the water. As we pulled up, a burly young man hurried up to the car to carry my small bag.

The house’s decoration mixed Victorian bourgeois and Scottish laird. A magnificent twelve-pointer red deer stag glared at William Morris prints and Chinese vases in the hallway. There was dark wood and heavy curtains, and a few haphazard portraits of people who weren’t called Trickett-Smith. It was very comfortable: more than that it was luxurious, especially for somewhere so isolated.

Madeleine, Sophie and Stephen were waiting for me in the drawing room. Madeleine had put on a little more weight every time I had seen her, but she was still a beautiful woman. Unlike Madeleine, Sophie had given birth to children — three of them — yet she was not matronly at all; in fact her figure was just as I remembered it. Her face was lined, but her eyes were still large and blue and wistful. The freckles were still there. And she was very pleased to see me.

As was Stephen, who shook my hand and clapped me on the back. He was probably the one who had changed most: jowls had appeared around his neck, and wrinkles pointed downwards from his impressive nose, lengthening his face. Sadness and anger combined to produce a sort of melancholy bitterness. He was still good-looking, there was no doubt about that, but if you were a cinema-goer, you would want the heroine to fall for the other chap.

‘I read Trail of the Scorpion,’ he said to me. ‘We both did. It was in all the bookstores in America. I never realized you had been in so many tight scrapes during the war! I really didn’t think you were going to make it through the desert.’

‘Neither did I,’ I said. ‘And poor Binns never did, remember.’

Corporal Binns had collapsed on the third day of our trek away from Gazala. The other soldier, Sergeant Gill, and I had tried to carry him, but had been unable to. So we had left him to die. There had been no choice. Or there had been a choice: die with him, or live without him. Gill and I had decided to live.

Four days later we had bumped into a Rhodesian Long Range Desert Group patrol and been driven back to the Allied lines. But Corporal Binns’s body remained in the desert. It was that choice, that decision, that had sat with me two years later when I was in the German prison camp. It was why I had eventually written a book. And it was probably why the book had sold so well. The reader couldn’t help asking himself, what would I have done?

‘Why did you call it a novel?’ asked Nathan. ‘Is it fiction?’

‘Not really. I made up some of the conversations, where I couldn’t remember what people actually said, or even some of the details of what happened. But I now realize that almost everyone who writes a memoir does that.’

‘And they are making a movie, I hear?’ said Stephen.

‘Yes. They’ve written the script and they are planning to start filming in November. I think they are going to do the desert scenes in Morocco.’

‘Who is going to play you?’ asked Nathan.

‘They plan to ask Richard Crowther,’ I said. Richard Crowther was a big British actor who had just starred in a film about the Malta convoys. But as I spoke, the obvious question arose. ‘Would you do it, Stephen? I can always ask.’

‘That would be swell!’ said Nathan. ‘Imagine Stephen playing Angus!’

‘He’d probably be better at it than me,’ I said. Actually, I found the thought of Stephen playing me on the screen a bit creepy. But the producer would probably say no anyway, and if he said yes, that was his problem. I was uncomfortable with the whole idea of seeing myself portrayed on film, and had almost turned down the studio’s offer. I had no intention of watching it.

‘I’d give it a go,’ said Stephen. ‘It would be fun.’

‘I’ll ask them then,’ I said.

‘So what’s it like being famous?’ said Sophie.

‘I’m not really famous,’ I said. ‘I’m not like Stephen — no one knows what I look like. The patients like it, those of them that know. And the money was useful. I invested some of it in Wakefield Oil, which was a good idea.’

Nathan grinned. ‘I hope that’s working out well for you?’

‘Very well, thank you, Nathan. Keep up the good work.’

‘Did you see Nathan’s profile in Fortune magazine last year?’ said Tony. ‘“The new breed of American oil baron”. All these famous people I know!’

No one said anything. Within a couple of seconds, the silence switched from accidental to awkward, as everyone remembered Tony’s desire to become a celebrated artist.

Tony laughed. ‘I know what you are all thinking. I wanted to be the next Picasso. But Alden was wrong: it was never going to happen. I just don’t have the talent. But I’m OK with that. I love painting. I love Capri. And now Elaine’s gone, I love my life. I do miss Alden, though. And I still have him to thank for setting me up.’

‘As do I,’ said Nathan.

‘Yeah, but I’m sure Wakefield Oil has done better with you in charge.’

‘Much better,’ said Madeleine. ‘The other stockholders all love him.’

‘Are you going to write another book, Angus?’

‘Oh, no. One is enough. And I don’t plan to have any more experiences like that to merit it. But there was something satisfying about getting it all down on paper. It sort of worked it out of my system. The fact people want to read it is a bonus.’

We ate a light lunch, prepared by the stalker’s wife, Mrs Ferguson, and spent the afternoon lazing outside on the lawn in front of the house, reading and chatting. Tony plunged into the loch, but the shock of the cold water had him screaming, and he was out within thirty seconds. He said the water was invigorating, but no one believed him. He just looked in pain.

It was a magnificent spot: the loch with its graceful curve, the ancient woods tumbling down to its shore, and the brown- and red-flanked mountains. There was not another habitation in sight: the isolation was absolute. The heat of the August afternoon settled on the water and created a bluish haze that hung round the tops of Ben Wyvis.

‘How high do you think that is?’ said Sophie.

‘Five thousand feet?’ said Tony.

‘Three thousand feet?’ said Stephen. ‘Four? There’s nothing in Scotland much higher than four thousand.’

‘Ben Nevis is four thousand four hundred,’ I said.

‘Trust you to know that,’ said Stephen.

‘I’d like to have a go at it tomorrow,’ said Sophie. ‘Will anyone join me?’

‘We’re supposed to be going stalking tomorrow,’ said Stephen.

‘But not the girls,’ said Madeleine. ‘Or even if we are, we spent our childhoods avoiding hunting deer. Papa loves killing deer, and Sophie and I don’t. But there is no chance that I will climb that mountain either.’

‘I’ll go with you,’ I said.

‘Don’t you want to come stalking?’ said Stephen.

‘Maybe another day. I would like to conquer Ben Wyvis. There is a little bit of the Edmund Hillary in me, and he’s demanding a challenge.’

Sophie smiled at me. ‘Thanks, Angus. Maybe we can ask Mrs Ferguson for a packed lunch.’

Stephen looked at his wife and at me. ‘I’ll check with the stalker to make sure you don’t scare the deer.’

Dinner was a formal affair. Stephen had warned everyone to bring dinner jackets, and he or his father had somehow rustled up a butler, Macpherson, from a neighbouring estate. The effort was worth it. The dining room was beautiful: silver and polished mahogany glimmering in the candlelight, with the evening light slipping away from the loch outside the large windows. The heather on the higher moorland burned a dramatic orange in the evening sun, while the loch slumbered a serene grey.

The two sisters looked gorgeous: Madeleine wore an expensive gown and serious jewels; Sophie’s yellow dress was much simpler. Stephen took his place at the head of the table, and acted as host. Nathan, who was the real host, was happy to let him do it. Sleek and composed, attentive rather than ostentatious, Nathan seemed comfortable with his considerable wealth and power, so comfortable he didn’t have the urge to flaunt it, especially among friends. But the butler loved Stephen, who acted the true aristocrat, even if he wasn’t quite. The food was good; the drink flowed. It was all rather fun.

Everyone was drinking, but Stephen was drinking fastest. The butler was happy to keep him topped up.

‘Is there anyone you should have brought up here with you, Angus?’ he asked.

‘Not at the moment, no,’ I said.

‘I’m surprised,’ said Stephen. ‘I’d have thought a country doctor would be a real catch.’

‘I’m probably too set in my ways for anyone to live with me now,’ I said, making sure that I didn’t look at Sophie as I did so. That wasn’t quite correct. There had been a few girlfriends, but I hadn’t wanted to share the rest of my life with any of them, and as I and they had got older, fending them off from marriage had become tiresome. These days, in my forties, I didn’t even bother to start the process.

‘What about you, Tony?’

‘Tony has Luciana,’ said Nathan.

‘She should have come along,’ said Madeleine.

Tony grinned. ‘I’m not sure she would have liked it. She’s quite particular about cooking. I doubt Scottish cuisine is her thing.’

‘No, seriously,’ said Madeleine. ‘You should have brought her with you. Next time, she’s definitely invited.’

‘Hold on,’ said Stephen. ‘She’s Tony’s housekeeper. I’m sure she’s a very good cook, but it would hardly be appropriate.’

‘What do you mean, not appropriate?’ said Madeleine. ‘It would be lovely. And besides, who would care all the way up here?’

‘The servants, for one,’ said Stephen. ‘And me. And Sophie.’

‘Don’t be absurd, Stephen,’ said Sophie. ‘It would be wonderful to meet her, Tony.’

‘I’m not being absurd!’ said Stephen. ‘She’s a bloody housekeeper, for God’s sake. It would be all wrong. Sometimes I think you French let standards slip. Or have you been in America too long?’

Madeleine laughed. ‘Stephen, you have met Papa. He would never let standards slip. The poor man still hasn’t recovered from us marrying foreigners. And commoners at that.’

Stephen glared at his sister-in-law. He did not see himself as a commoner, whatever a minor French aristocrat might think. ‘I’m sure he wouldn’t have invited Tony’s housekeeper to his chateau.’

‘Don’t be such an ass, Stephen,’ I said, allowing my slight Yorkshire accent to broaden. ‘If you can all put up with an oik like me, then you can put up with Luciana. What’s her pasta like, Tony?’

‘Out of this world,’ said Tony. ‘You should come back to Capri to try some.’

He beamed at Stephen with such bonhomie that Stephen was forced to smile back. ‘That’s an excellent idea.’

The pudding was cleared, a rhubarb crumble, and Sophie spoke. ‘Madeleine and I will leave you alone to enjoy your port.’

‘Oh, no you don’t,’ said Nathan. ‘And before you start, Stephen, I have something I want to say to all of you, and I think it would be best said over a glass of port.’

Stephen looked as if he was about to protest, but decided not to. He nodded to the butler, who returned a moment later with a decanter and a humidor. The other three men selected cigars, I pulled out my pipe and Sophie and Madeleine lit cigarettes. The decanter whizzed around the table.

‘I have an ulterior motive for bringing you together here,’ said Nathan. ‘A secondary motive. The first is, it is wonderful to see all of you together. It’s been far too long.’

‘Hear, hear,’ said Stephen, knocking back his port and refilling his glass.

‘But something has come up that we need to think about and discuss. It relates to poor Alden’s death.’

The table went quiet.

‘Elaine has remarried. Her husband is a lawyer called Francis Brockman. Elaine told him what really happened to poor Alden, and he is of the opinion that as a result Alden’s will should be challenged.’

‘What, so she gets half the money?’

‘He claims Alden’s share of Wakefield Oil should have been divided equally between all the cousins and shouldn’t have gone to me alone.’

‘But that’s appalling!’ said Stephen. ‘How can she do that? We all agreed to stick to the same story. Is she going to admit she lied?’

‘Yes. And she is going to say that she was only sixteen and we all put pressure on her.’

‘But you saved my life, Nathan! I’m convinced Alden was going to cut my throat. Tony, can you speak to her?’

Tony laughed. ‘I could. It would just make things worse.’

‘Can’t you control your wife?’

Tony puffed at his cigar. ‘Honestly? No. Never could.’

Stephen snorted in disgust. ‘How can we stop her?’

‘I’ve thought about this hard,’ said Nathan. ‘And I’ve spoken to lawyers. We can’t stop her. If she decides to tell a court that she saw me kill Alden, we can’t stop her.’

‘Can you buy her off?’ said Stephen.

‘If it was just Elaine, I could maybe give her a gift of something to keep her sweet. But this guy Brockman would view that as a sign of weakness.’ Nathan sipped his port. ‘There is something we can do, but that involves your cooperation. All of you.’

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘Tell whoever asks that Elaine is lying. Say that she was only sixteen and she was drunk. Say she’s just making it up. Four adults against one drunk child. They will believe us.’

‘I’ll do it,’ said Stephen right away.

‘So will I,’ said Tony, much less enthusiastically. He avoided Nathan’s eyes, and stared at the ruby liquid in his crystal port glass. I remembered how Tony had initially been reluctant to go along with the plan.

‘Angus? It was your idea after all?’

Nathan was right. Having lied once, we would have to lie again. It was an inevitable consequence of taking that decision over twenty years ago. ‘And me,’ I said.

‘Madeleine wasn’t there, so it’s easy for her to back us up. That leaves Sophie?’

Sophie slumped back in her chair and stared at her glass of port.

‘Sophie?’

‘I’m not going to lie under oath.’

‘Oh, come on, Sophie!’ said Stephen. ‘That’s ridiculous!’

‘You won’t have to,’ said Nathan. ‘You’ll be lying to a lawyer. A greedy lawyer at that. He doesn’t care half as much about Alden as we do. He didn’t even know him; he just wants the money.’

‘No, I know,’ said Sophie. ‘It’s just that someone’s death is serious. It’s not the kind of thing you should lie about. We shouldn’t have lied in the first place.’

‘Sophie, you have to stick with the story,’ said Stephen. His voice was commanding. Aggressive. Threatening.

‘She doesn’t have to,’ said Nathan, calmly. ‘But I hope she will choose to. There is no one who regrets Alden’s death more than me. Every day, I wish I hadn’t killed him. Stephen shouldn’t have picked up the sword in the first place. Alden shouldn’t have taken the “duel” so seriously. There is a lot we got wrong. But not lying. We all know it was an accident. It wasn’t murder, and if the French police had arrested me, that would have been wrong. Unjust. Wouldn’t it, Sophie?’

‘They might have agreed it was an accident,’ she said.

‘Maybe. Maybe not. Sadly, I don’t think you can necessarily trust the police in murder investigations, especially when there are foreigners involved. It would have been too easy for them to solve the crime and lock me up. Or chop off my head.’

‘I suppose you’re right,’ said Sophie, still fiddling with her glass.

‘So will you support me? Us?’

‘I’m not saying I won’t,’ said Sophie. ‘But I’m not saying I will, either. I need to think about it.’

‘Don’t worry, Nathan,’ said Stephen. ‘She’ll do what she should.’

Nathan ignored him. ‘Have a think about it, Sophie,’ he said. ‘You’ve got all week.’

Sophie smiled her thanks. It seemed to me that Nathan’s approach was more likely to work than Stephen’s. It also seemed that now we all had no choice, even Sophie. But I did admire her attempt to be honest.