‘What planet are you on? I stuck my neck out for you, and this is the thanks I get. Do you know what this could have cost me?’

‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what else I could have done. I didn’t expect this to happen.’

‘You just didn’t think Cal, did you? Just forget it.’

‘She died, by the way,’ said Cal, forlornly.

‘Enjoy the funeral,’ she spat back and the connection went dead.

Cal looked to the ceiling and breathed deeply in and out, again and again and his eyes began to close.

He was woken by the rattling bleat of a sheep. As he lay  letting his senses catch up, he felt his head thump, his system out of time. The sooner he got up and got some coffee, the better he’d feel.

He didn’t wash in the shower, just let the water pour over his skin. As he towelled himself down, he saw his face in the mirror looking tired, his eyes red. He dressed quickly and went downstairs to the restaurant, ordering a bar meal of baked potato and cheese. He dreaded meeting so many people he didn’t know, strangers who would know who he was. At least Mairi would be there.

There was rain in the air as he drove back to the house. Clouds hung over the ocean close to the cliffs; it was as if the horizon was at the end of the land. There was no familiar faint haze of smoke curling from the chimney. Today, although it looked the same from outside, he knew the house was empty and lifeless. Wind stirred the grass as he walked up the path. Mary had managed to maintain small flower beds of lupins and roses, but the grass had taken advantage of the time she had been ill.

As he walked round the leeward side of the house the wind stopped buffeting his ears. Mairi’s technique with the lock evaded him and he had to resort to a brute shove to open the door. The kitchen was cold, perhaps for the first time in decades. 

Throwing his jacket over a chair, he went over to the stove and knelt down. There was a pale blue, plastic bucket beside it, half filled with small, broken peats. He tugged open the door of the stove and threw a clump of peat inside. A tidy bundle of old newspapers lay on the floor. He crumpled some pages into knots, placing them among the peats. A box of matches sat on the shelf above and he used them to light the paper, then rubbed his hands, hoping that the fire would take. There was a knack to it that he knew he didn’t have. He might have to repeat the process two or three times before he had a good fire going. He wanted to warm some life back into the house.

Going through to the living room, he pulled back the curtains and lit the gas fire that sat in the hearth. Heat surged out. He stood with his back to the fire and cast his eyes around the room. Yesterday this had still been someone’s home. A week before that, Mary had still been moving around it, opening doors, leaning on the settee for support, making soup on the stove, settling for the night in her bed. Now it was so still.