Entry Island

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

On this Christmas day, in the coldest, darkest month of the year, it gives me the most extraordinary pleasure to record that shortly after dinner tonight, I proposed to Catrìona Mackinnon, the child whom I brought into this world twenty-two years ago, and with whom I have fallen deeply in love. To my inexpressible joy she has accepted, and we are to be married in the spring, just as soon as the snows have melted and the warmth of the sun brings life back to the land.

This is the last entry I shall ever make. I write it to record the birth of my baby son, Angus, named after my father. And the death of his mother, Catrìona, in childbirth. At one and the same time the happiest and the worst day of my life.