The Blackhouse

THIRTEEN

It might seem like stating the obvious, but the Lews Castle School in those days was in Lews Castle. Many of the students and staff lodged at the school, in accommodation created amidst the castle’s rabbit warren of corridors and landings. I only mention it, because the year that Calum and I climbed up on the roof was the last year that the school was actually in the castle. The building was in a poor state of repair and deteriorating fast, and the education authority couldn’t afford the upkeep. So the school moved elsewhere, even though it was still called the Lews Castle School.

Oddly enough, the place it moved to was the Gibson Hostel in Ripley Place, where I lodged during my first year at the Nicholson, which was my third year of secondary school.

Because of his poor results at Crobost, Artair had been sent to the Lews Castle for vocational studies, and found himself in the delightful company of such old friends as Murdo Ruadh and his big brother, Angel. Calum had the good fortune to be sent to the Nicholson. He never said anything, but it must have been a huge relief for him to escape the endless bullying and beatings he had suffered through all the years at Crobost.

I never had very much time for Calum at school. He sort of tagged around after us, I think in the hope that he might pick up some of our cast-off girlfriends. Calum wasn’t very good with girls. He was crushingly shy and would blush to the roots of his ginger curls if one even spoke to him. The only way he would get to meet any girls was if he was part of a crowd. And that way he would never have to make a fool of himself by making his own introductions. It’s hard for teenage boys. Girls don’t realize it. You have to put yourself out there, vulnerable to rejection if a girl turns you down when you ask for a dance, or offer to buy her a fish supper in The Narrows. All those hormones that flood a teenage boy’s system force him into risking such rejection, then leave him frustrated as well as humiliated when it comes. I am happy not to be fifteen any more.

We were all at the St Valentine’s Day dance that year in Stornoway town hall. Usually we would go back to Ness for the weekend, but because of the dance everyone was staying over at the hostels. There was a band playing the latest songs from the charts. It’s funny how at that age music provides your memory markers. Usually it’s olfactory, a scent associated with some place or moment in your life, that catches you by surprise and transports you back through space and time, evoking with startling resonance a memory you had all but forgotten. But it’s mostly music that takes you back to your teens. I have always associated certain songs with certain girls. I remember a girl called Sine (her name was pronounced like the English Sheena). It was Sine I took to the dance that February. Whenever I hear the Foreigner single ‘Waiting for a Girl Like You’, maybe just a fragment of it caught on some golden oldies show on the car radio, or some TV repeat of an old Top of the Pops, I think of Sine. She was a pretty wee girl, but a bit too keen. I can remember jumping about at the dance like an idiot to XTC’s ‘Senses Working Overtime’, and Meat Loaf’s ‘Dead Ringer for Love’. But ‘Waiting for a Girl Like You’ was the Sine song. As I recall, that night I didn’t wait for her at all. I abandoned her and left early with Calum to get back to the hostel before they closed the doors. That was my excuse, anyway.

Artair was still going out with Marsaili at the time, and they went to the St Valentine’s dance together. There was a song in the charts then called ‘Arthur’s Theme (Best That You Can Do)’. I thought it was really weird, because the lyrics seemed to fit Artair so well. All about just having a good time and not caring about other people’s aspirations for you. Artair’s Song, I called it. When they played it that night, Artair and Marsaili were dancing together, kind of close and smoochy. I was dancing with Sine, but I couldn’t help watching them over her head. I hadn’t listened to the first verse before, which wasn’t the verse about Arthur. But I caught it that time. It was about finding a girl who turns your heart around, and then losing her and not really knowing quite how you managed it. And those words stirred something inside me, some latent sense of jealousy or regret, and I found myself dancing with Sine and wishing it was Marsaili. Of course, it passed. Hormones again. They played havoc with my head in those days.

Calum was having a frustrating night. He’d been dancing with a demure little dark-haired girl called Anna. But only when it suited her. He asked her for every dance. Sometimes she would say yes. Other times she turned him down. He was completely smitten, and she knew it and was playing games with him.

About halfway through the night, a group of us was standing shivering out in the street, smoking, and drinking from cans of beer that someone had planked outside. The thump of music and the rabble of voices from the dance followed us out into the wet February night, along with Calum. Murdo Ruadh and Angel were there in the crowd and saw an opportunity to do a little Calum-baiting.

‘Aye, you’re on for a bit of nookie the night, son,’ Murdo said, leering at the miserable Calum.

‘That’ll be fucking right,’ Angel said. ‘She’s a wee prick-teaser that one.’

‘What would you know about her?’ Calum said moodily.

‘What do I know about her?’ Angel guffawed. ‘Everything, boy. Been there, done it.’

‘Liar!’ Calum shouted. In other circumstances, Angel might have taken offence and given Calum a doing, but for some reason he was in a benevolent mood that night and seemed more intent on taking Calum under his wing than doing him any harm. I know now, of course, that he had already formed a plan.

‘Anna works up at Lews Castle,’ he said. ‘She’s a maid at the school. Maid Anna, they call her.’

Murdo Ruadh slapped Calum on the back. ‘Aye, boy, and you’ve never lived until you’ve made Anna. Everyone else has.’ And he fell about laughing at his own joke.

Calum went for him. Like a cat. All claws and flailing arms. Murdo was so taken aback he dropped his can, and beer fizzed out of it all over the pavement. Artair and I pulled Calum off, and I really thought then that Murdo was going to kill him. But Angel stepped in, pushing a big hand into his wee brother’s chest. ‘Lay off, Ruadh. Can’t you see the boy’s smitten?’

Murdo was fuming. This was a serious loss of face. ‘I’ll fucking kill him.’

‘No, you won’t. The boy’s just not thinking right. I remember the first time you got all soppy over some lassie. God, it was pathetic.’ Murdo’s humiliation increased with every word his brother uttered. ‘You need to … what’s the word…empathize.’ He grinned. ‘There’s maybe a wee favour we could do the boy.’

Murdo looked at Angel as if he thought he had lost his senses. ‘What’re you on about?’

‘Bath night.’

A look of complete incomprehension scrawled itself on Murdo’s face. ‘Bath night? For Christ’s sake, Angel, we’re not sharing that with a wee shite like him.’

Calum struggled to free himself from my grip and straighten his jacket. ‘What do you mean?’ Out in the bay a foghorn sounded, and we turned to see the lights of the Suilven as she ploughed her way out into the Minch on the start of her three-and-a-half hour crossing to Ullapool.

Angel said, ‘The staff at the school have got rooms up at the top of the castle. They share a bathroom up in the gods, and because the window looks out on to the roof, they never pull the blind. Wee Anna takes her bath every Sunday night, ten o’clock on the dot. I don’t think there’s a boy in the school who hasn’t been up there for a peek. She’s got a great wee body on her, that right, Murdo?’

Murdo just glowered at his brother.

‘We could arrange a private viewing for you if you want.’

‘That’s disgusting!’ Calum said.

Angel shrugged. ‘Suit yourself. We’ve made the offer. You don’t take us up on it, that’s your loss.’

I could see that Calum was torn, but I was relieved when at length he said, ‘No way,’ and went strutting off back into the dance.

‘That’s pretty shitty,’ I said, ‘winding him up like that.’

Angel made a great show of extravagant innocence. ‘Nobody’s winding him up, orphan boy. You get a view into that bathroom up there as clear as day. You fancy a wee peek yourself?’

‘Fuck off,’ I said. I was good at the witty comeback in those days. And I went back into the dance in search of Sine.

I was pleased to see that Calum was dancing with Anna when I went in, but over the next hour or so she must have knocked him back seven or eight times. On a couple of occasions I saw him sitting on one of the seats along the wall, all on his own, watching miserably as she danced with other boys. She even danced with Angel Macritchie, the two of them chatting animatedly and laughing together, and I saw her rubbing her body against him and glancing over to see if Calum was watching. Of course, he was. He was a poor soul, really, and I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him.

And then I forgot about him, and started working on how to extricate myself from the Sine situation. Every time I sat down she was all over me. She even put her tongue in my ear, which I thought was disgusting. Ironically, it was Calum who rescued me in the end. He came up to us with his hands thrust deep in his pockets. I remember the band was playing the Stranglers’ song ‘Golden Brown’.

‘I’m going.’

I made a great show of looking at my watch. ‘Oh, my God, is it that time already? We’ll never get back to the Gibson before they lock the doors.’ Calum opened his mouth to say something, but I cut him off before he got me into trouble. ‘We’re going to have to run.’ I jumped to my feet and turned to Sine. ‘Sorry, Sine. See you next week.’ I saw her jaw drop in amazement before I took Calum by the arm and hurried him away across the dance floor. ‘But not if I see you first,’ I muttered under my breath.

‘What’s going on?’ Calum said.

‘Just getting myself out of a tight corner.’

‘Lucky you. I can’t even get into a tight corner.’

The smell of the sea was strong on the wind that night. An icy February blast that would have cut you in two. The rain had stopped, but the streets were all shiny under the streetlamps, like wet paint. The Narrows were jammed, and Calum and I pushed our way through to the inner harbour and along Cromwell Street to Church Street, before climbing the hill to Matheson Road.

It was only when we turned into Robertson Road that Calum told me he was going to do it.

‘Do what?’

‘I’m going up to the castle tomorrow night.’

‘What?’ I couldn’t believe him. ‘You’re kidding.’

‘It’s all arranged. I spoke to Angel before we left the dance. He’s going to fix it for me.’

‘Why?’

‘Because Angel was right. She’s just a wee prick-teaser. It’ll be like getting my own back on her, getting to see her naked in the bath.’

‘No, I mean why would Angel fix it for you? All he’s ever done is beat the living crap out of you. Why would he suddenly be your best pal?’

Calum shrugged. ‘He’s not as bad as you think, you know.’

‘Aye, right.’ I was unable to conceal my scepticism.

‘Anyway, I was wondering …’ He hesitated. From up here we could just see, over the rooftops, the crenellated towers of the castle, floodlit on the hill across the bay.

‘What were you wondering, Calum?’

‘I was wondering if you would come with me?’

‘What? You’ve got to be joking! No way.’ Not only would it be a Sunday, and we’d get hell if we were caught sneaking out at that time of night, but I was highly suspicious of the whole thing. Calum was being set up. For what, I had no idea, but I was pretty sure that Angel had not suddenly discovered a philanthropic side to his nature.

‘Oh, please, Fin. I can’t do it on my own. You don’t have to go up on the roof or anything. Just come to the castle with me.’

‘No!’ But I already knew I would. Reluctantly. It was certain that they were planning something for the poor wee bugger. And someone had to look out for him. If I went along maybe I could stop him from getting into too much trouble. I wish now that I hadn’t. Maybe things would have turned out differently.

It was a bitterly cold night, a stiff wind sweeping frequent squally showers of sleet and hail in off the Minch. I really did not want to leave the dry, warm security of the hostel to embark on some insane adventure, nature unknown, outcome uncertain. But I had, in the end, promised Calum, and so we ducked out into the night just before nine-thirty, waterproofs turned up around our necks, and baseball caps pulled down low on our heads, peaks obscuring faces in case we were spotted. We had left a window open on a first-floor corridor at the back of the hostel, accessible by rone pipe, so that we could get back in. Although I did not relish the climb on a night like this.

Stornoway was like a ghost town, streetlamps casting feeble pools of light in dark, empty streets. The God-fearing people of the town were locked up cosy in their homes behind drawn curtains, watching TV and supping cups of hot cocoa before heading for bed. In the inner harbour, the rattle and creak of trawlers tied up at the quayside fought to be heard above the wind. The icy black waters were choppy, slapping against the concrete stanchions of the quay and breaking white on the shores of the Castle Green on the other side of the bay. We hurried along the deserted Bayhead, turning off at the Bridge Community Centre and scampering quickly over the bridge into the trees beyond. Up the hill, then, in a fearful sleety squall, and on to the road above the golf club. As we reached the road, the sky opened up, and the most extraordinary silver moonlight spilled down across the manicured expanse of golf course, so bright you might almost have expected to see golfers pitching up the hill to the fifth hole.

Lews Castle was built in the 1870s as a mansion house for Sir James Matheson. He bought the Isle of Lewis in 1844 with the proceeds from the opium he and his partner William Jardine had imported into China, turning six million Chinese into hopeless addicts in the process. It’s strange to think that the misery of millions led to the transformation of a tiny Hebridean island thousands of miles away on the other side of the world, or that people and their land can just be bought and sold. Matheson built a new harbour, and gas and waterworks in Stornoway, as well as a brickworks at Garrabost. He created a chemical factory to extract tar from peat, and a yard to build and repair ships. He transformed the forty-five miles of dirt tracks across the island into two hundred miles of coach-bearing roads. And, of course, he razed the old Seaforth Lodge on the hill overlooking the town, to build his mock-Tudor castle.

It is an extraordinary building of pink granite, with turrets and towers and crenellated battlements. It dominates the hill above the harbour, and is probably the most unlikely thing you will see on any of the islands that make up the Hebridean archipelago.

Of course, in those days, I didn’t know the full history. Lews Castle was just there, as if it had always been there. You accepted it, the same way you accepted the cliffs that ringed the Butt, or the fabulous beaches at Scarasta and Luskentyre.

It loomed dark that night amongst the trees at the top of the hill, lights showing in just a few of its windows. Calum and I skirted the main entrance, a huge vaulted porch leading to enormous double doors, and made our way around the back to where Angel had told Calum they would meet him, next to the single-storey annexe that housed the boiler room. Right enough, as we arrived in the long, narrow courtyard between the boiler room and the laundry, a figure moved in the shadows and an arm waved us forward.

‘Come on, hurry up!’ I was taken aback to find that it was Artair. He was surprised to see me, too. ‘What are you doing here?’ he hissed in my ear.

‘Looking out for Calum,’ I whispered back.

But he just shook his head. ‘You daft bastard!’ And my sense of foreboding deepened.

Artair opened a red door into a short, gloomy corridor. It smelled of old cabbage. I soon realized why, as Artair put a finger to his lips and led us through the kitchens in the semidark and then out into what they called the Long Hall. It ran almost the full length of the front of the castle, night lights glowing faintly all along it. As we slipped past what had originally been the library, and then the ballroom, I realized that if we were going to be caught, it would most likely be here. There was nowhere to hide in the nearly two hundred feet of hallway. Any one of the doors along either side, or at either end, might open at any minute, trapping us in full view.

So it was with some relief that we reached the main staircase at the far end of the hall, and followed Artair up the wide stone steps two at a time to the first floor. A narrow spiral stairway took us up to the second floor. Artair led us through further dark halls and doorways into a corridor leading to a tall window at the north end of the castle. There, in the shadows, a group of boys stood waiting in impatient anticipation. More than half a dozen of them. Torches flashed in our faces and I caught a glimpse of theirs. Some I knew, some I didn’t. Murdo Ruadh and Angel were among them.

‘What are you doing here, orphan boy?’ Angel growled in a low whisper, an echo of Artair.

‘Just making sure Calum doesn’t come to any harm.’

‘Why would he?’

‘You tell me.’

‘Listen, smart boy.’ Angel grabbed the lapels of my jacket. ‘That wee bitch’ll be getting into her bath in less than five minutes. So you’ve not got much time.’

‘I’m not going up on the roof with him.’ I pulled myself free of his grasp.

‘Aye, you fucking are,’ Murdo breathed in my face. ‘Or it might just come to the attention of the janitor that there’s an intruder in the castle. Know what I’m saying?’

‘So call the janitor,’ I said. ‘Then whatever it is you’ve got planned will be well and truly screwed.’

Murdo glared at me, but I’d called his bluff and he had no comeback.

Angel slid the window open and stepped out on to the fire escape. ‘Come on, Calum. Get out here.’

‘Don’t, Calum,’ I said. ‘They’re setting you up.’

‘Fuck off, orphan boy!’ There was murder in Angel’s eyes as he peered back at me through the window. Then his frown relaxed into a smile and he turned it on the wavering Calum. ‘Come on, son. We’re not setting you up for anything. Except an eyeful. If you don’t hurry up you’ll miss her.’ Calum turned away from my disapproval and climbed on to the fire escape. It rattled noisily as I climbed out after him. There was still a chance of persuading him not to do it.

From the second-floor platform of the fire escape, steps ran down to a half-landing, and doubled back to the first-floor platform immediately below. From there steps led up and on to the roof of the entrance porch, and in the other direction down and around the wall to the front of the castle. An extending ladder leaned against the wall outside the window. Angel unhooked the extension and slid it up, almost to its full length, re-hooked it and leaned it against the wall again, adjusting the angle to make it easier to climb.

‘There you go.’

Calum looked up. The ladder reached just beyond a ledge nearly three feet below the crenellations around the roof. I saw the panic in his eyes. ‘I can’t do it.’

‘Course you can.’ Angel’s voice was almost soothing.

Calum gave me a frightened rabbit look. ‘Come with me, Fin. I’m not good with heights.’

‘You should have fucking thought of that before you came,’ Murdo whispered through the window.

‘You really don’t have to do this, Calum,’ I said. ‘Let’s just go home.’

I wasn’t prepared for the violence with which Angel slammed me up against the wall. ‘You go up there with him, orphan boy. Make sure he doesn’t come to any harm.’ I felt his spittle in my face. ‘That’s what you came for, isn’t it?’

‘I’m not going up on the roof!’

Angel leaned in close and whispered, almost intimately, ‘Either you go up, orphan boy, or you go down. The hard way.’

‘Please, Fin,’ Calum said. ‘I’m too scared to do it on my own.’

I didn’t see that I had any choice. I pulled myself free of Angel’s grip. ‘Alright.’ I looked up towards the roof wishing I had never agreed to come. In fact it looked a fairly simple matter to climb the ladder and then swing yourself up through one of the crenellations on to the roof. It had to be flat up there, and once you were up there was no danger of falling, with the battlements creating a retaining wall.

‘We’re running out of time,’ Angel said. ‘And the longer we’re out here the more chance we have of getting caught.’

‘Go on, Calum,’ I said. ‘Let’s get it over with.’

‘You are coming with me?’

‘I’m right behind you.’ I glanced back through the window at Artair, and he just shrugged, as if to say that it wasn’t his fault that I had chosen to come with Calum.

Angel said, ‘Once you’re up, you’ll see the pitched roof of the attic. It’s a skylight window into the bathroom. You’ll know which one when the light comes on.’

And all the time I kept wondering what the trick would be. What we were really going to find up there. But there was no way of backing out now. At least the rain was off for the moment, and the moonlight made it easy to see where we were going.

Calum set off up the ladder, making it tremble beneath him, the rattle of it transferring to the fire escape. ‘For Christ’s sake keep the noise down,’ Angel called after him in a stage whisper, grabbing the ladder to hold it steady. Then he turned to me. ‘Right, orphan boy, on you go.’ He grinned, and I just knew this was all going to end in tears.

As I had thought, it was relatively easy getting on to the roof from the ladders. Even for Calum. I joined him, crouching on the flat, tarred surface, and we could see, through the crenellations, all the way down to the harbour below. The trawlers looked unreal, toy boats lined up against the quay, the town spreading itself up over the hill behind, necklaces of light tracing the lines of the streets as they criss-crossed each other in a traditional grid pattern. Somewhere, away out in the Minch, we saw the lights of a tanker making its way steadily north through a heavy swell.

In the moonlight I could see the pitch of the attic roof quite clearly. There were a couple of skylights, but no light in either of them.

‘Where now?’ Calum whispered.

‘Let’s just sit tight and wait to see if a light comes on.’

We crouched down with our backs to the battlements, knees pulled up to our chests to try to keep warm, and waited. I checked my watch. It was nearly five past ten. I heard some rattling and giggling from the fire escape below, and was tempted to give up right there and then and climb back down. But the thought of Angel waiting for us at the foot of the ladders was enough to make me decide to give it another few minutes.

Suddenly a light went on in the nearer of the two skylights, and an elongated square of yellow fell out across the roof. Calum’s eyes positively gleamed with anticipation. ‘That must be her.’ He was suddenly emboldened. ‘Come on.’ And he scuttled across the roof to the skylight. Since I was there, I thought, I might as well have a look, too. So I followed him, and we crouched for a minute or more below the level of the window, plucking up the courage to raise our heads into the light and peer in. We could hear the sound of water running, and someone moving about below the window.

‘You go first,’ I said. ‘Better hurry up, before the window gets all steamed up and we can’t see anything.’

A look of worry flitted across Calum’s face. ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’ Slowly he eased himself up the pitch of the roof until he was pushing up on his tiptoes, and I could see him peering in the window. I heard a loud hiss, and then he was crouching down beside me again, a face like thunder. I don’t think I’d ever seen him so angry. ‘Bastards! Fucking bastards!’ I hadn’t heard him swear like that either.

‘What is it?’

‘See for yourself.’ He drew another deep indignant breath. ‘Bastards!’

So I pushed myself up the angle of the roof until my face was level with the window. Just as someone on the other side took it off the latch and pushed it out. I found myself face to face with a big, round, white-faced woman wearing a pink bath cap and nothing else. The startled look on her face could only have been a reflection of my own. I’m not sure if it was my scream or hers that I heard, but we both screamed, of that I am certain, and she went staggering backwards and fell into her bath, great mountains of juddering white flesh displacing gallons of hot water all across the floor. For a moment I was paralysed, staring in shock at the fat, naked woman floundering in the bath. She was sixty if she was a day. My face must have been clearly visible in the bathroom light, because she was staring back at me, her legs still in the air. I had no wish to see what they revealed, but found my eyes drawn in horrified fascination. She took a deep tremulous breath that sent her mountainous pink breasts quivering, and she screamed the scream of the dead. I thought she was going to burst my eardrums. I slithered back down the roof and almost landed on top of Calum.

His eyes were like headlamps. ‘What happened?’

I shook my head. ‘It doesn’t matter. We’ve got to get the hell out of here!’

I could hear her screaming, ‘Help!’ And, ‘Rape!’ And thought that now she was just indulging in wishful thinking. Lights were going on all across the roof. I ran back over to where we had climbed up from the ladder, and I could hear Calum pattering along behind me. I squeezed between the crenellations, turning and dropping a leg down to find the top rung, before I realized it wasn’t there.

‘Shit!’

‘What is it?’ Calum looked terrified.

‘The bastards have taken the ladder away.’ So that had been their plan. To trap us up on the roof. They must have known Anna would not be taking a bath that night. She might even have been in league with them. What none of them could have foreseen, however, was that we would be spotted by the fat lady who was. Now the ladder was gone, we were stuck on the roof, and the whole castle had been alerted. It could only be a matter of time before they found us, and then there would be hell to pay. I climbed back on to the roof, anger fighting with anticipation of the humiliation to come.

‘Well, we can’t just stay here.’ Calum was panicking. ‘They’ll find us.’

‘We’ve got no choice. There’s no way down unless you’ve suddenly grown wings.’

‘We can’t be caught! We can’t!’ He was becoming hysterical. ‘What’ll my mother say?’

‘I think that’s the least of our worries, Calum.’

‘Oh God, oh God,’ he said again and again. ‘We’ve got to do something.’ He started climbing through the crenellations.

I grabbed him. ‘What are you doing?’

‘If we get on to the ledge, we can jump down on to the fire escape from there. It’s only about ten feet.’ This from the boy who only ten minutes earlier had been claiming a fear of heights.

‘Are you mad? Calum, it’s too dangerous.’

‘No, we can do it, we can.’

‘Jesus, Calum, don’t!’ But there was nothing I could do to stop him. He braced himself with a hand on either side of the gap, and slid down until his feet found the ledge. There were lights coming on now in the north tower. The woman was still screaming, but her voice had become distant. I had a mental image of her running naked along a corridor somewhere, and I shuddered.

I saw Calum glance down, and when he turned back again his face was sheet-white in the moonlight. There was an odd look in his eyes, and I felt my stomach lurch. I just knew something bad was going to happen. ‘Fin, I was wrong. I can’t do it’ His voice was quivering and breathless.

‘Give me your hand.’

‘I can’t move. Fin, I can’t move.’

‘Yes, you can. Just give me your hand and we’ll get you back on the roof.’

But he was shaking his head. ‘I can’t do it. I can’t. I can’t.’ And I watched in disbelief as he just let go and slipped backwards out of view. I could not move. It was as if I had been turned to stone. There was a yawning silence, and then a dreadful clatter on the fire escape below. Calum never made a sound.

It must have been a full half-minute before I could bring myself to look. He had missed the second-floor platform completely, falling another whole floor to land on his back on the handrail and slide down on to the metal grille. His body was twisted at an unnatural angle, and he was not moving.

Right then felt like the worst moment of my life. I closed my eyes and prayed fervently that I would wake up.

‘Macleod!’ My name came up to me from below, and I heard a clatter on the fire escape. I opened my eyes and saw Angel on the platform. He had the ladder out there again, and was fumbling to slide the extension up the rungs. The top of the ladder scraped across the wall just beneath the crenellations. ‘Macleod! For fuck sake, get down here now!’

I was still stone, the same granite as the walls, a part of them, locked there for eternity. I couldn’t drag my eyes away from the prone, twisted form of poor Calum thirty feet below.

‘Macleod!’ Angel almost bellowed my name. Blood rushed back through my frozen veins and I began shaking almost uncontrollably. But, still, I could move again. And with jelly legs, I clambered like an automaton through the crenellations and on to the ladder, going down it faster than was safe, my hands burning on the cold metal. I had barely reached the platform when Angel grabbed my jacket. His face was inches from mine. I could smell the stale tobacco on his breath and for the second time that night felt his spittle in my face. ‘You don’t say a word. Not a fucking word. You were never here, right?’ And when I said nothing, he pushed his face even closer. ‘Right?’ I nodded. ‘Okay, go. Down the fire escape. Don’t even look back.’

He let go of me and starting climbing back through the window, leaving the ladder where it was, leaning up against the wall. I could see washed-out frightened faces in the darkness beyond. Still I didn’t move. Angel glared back at me from inside. And for the first time in my life I saw fear in his face. Real fear.

‘Go!’ He slid the window shut.

I turned then and ran down the rattling steps of the fire escape until I reached the first-floor platform. There I stopped. I would have to step over Calum’s body to reach the next flight of stairs. I could see his face now. Pale and passive, just as if he were sleeping. And then I saw the blood seeping slowly across the metal from behind his head, thick and dark, like molasses. There were voices coming from somewhere in the grounds below, and outside lights came on at the front door. I knelt down and touched his face. It was still warm, and I saw the rise and fall of his chest. He was breathing. But there was nothing I could do for him. It could only be a matter of minutes before they would find him. And me, too, if I didn’t go. I stepped carefully over him and ran down the final flight of steps as fast as I could, jumping the last half-dozen and then sprinting for the cover of the trees. I heard someone shout, and footsteps running on gravel. But I didn’t look back. And I didn’t stop running until I reached the bridge at the Community Centre. In the distance I heard the wail of a siren and saw the blue light of an ambulance flashing up through the trees towards the castle. I leaned over the rail, holding on to it to stop my legs from buckling, and threw up into the Bayhead River. The tears were streaming down my face in the freezing February wind, and I turned and hurried across the main road to begin the long, slow jog up Mackenzie Street to Matheson Road. The lights were out in most of the windows now, and I felt like I was the only person still alive in the whole of Stornoway.

By the time I got to Ripley Place, I could hear the distant siren of the ambulance on its return journey from the castle to the hospital. If I had believed in miracles, I would have asked God for one right there and then. Maybe it’s my fault that I didn’t. Maybe if I had, Calum would have been okay.

That was the last time I saw him, and I have lived with the memory of that final moment ever since. The spattering of freckles in a chalk-white face. The tight, carrot curls. The blood like treacle on the metal beneath him. The impossible twist of his body as it lay in the moonlight.

He was airlifted to a specialist unit in Glasgow. We heard through the grapevine that he had broken his back and wouldn’t walk again. He never returned to school, staying on the mainland during those first months for intensive therapy. It’s amazing how quickly time grows new skin over open wounds. As it became clear that the true circumstances surrounding what really took place that night were not going to surface after all, new memories replaced old, raw ones, like healing skin, and poor Calum gradually receded from the forefront of all our minds. An old wound that only hurt if you thought about it, and so you didn’t. At least, not consciously. Not if you could help it.