Maybe I could have helped her.’

‘Could you?’ asked Mairi pointedly.

Cal was taken aback. ‘What d’you mean?’ he asked defensively.

Mairi hesitated. ‘She didn’t want to tell you she wasn’t well. “Don’t trouble Calum, he’s so busy.” I heard that often. And what would you have done anyway? Would you have come? Probably not. So what would be the point in worrying you? That’s how she thought. It was only when she knew the end was close that she let me call you. If she couldn’t even tell you she was dying, why would she tell you anything else?’

‘She didn’t think I’d care,’ Cal said. It was a statement, not a question.

‘This is all getting too serious and things are sad enough just now,’ responded Mairi, lifting her voice. ‘I’m sure there was nothing more to it than she’d forgotten. It was a long time ago. And here we are, beginning to imagine some great mystery. I’m already at the stage I can’t remember what I did yesterday.’

Mairi set about tidying up cups and plates, carrying them to the sink and running hot water into a basin. Cal remained where he was, lost in thought.

‘I’m sorry, I was speaking out of turn there,’ she said, clattering the dishes into the basin. ‘I shouldn’t have said that.’

‘Doesn’t make it wrong, though. You just said what I know deep down anyway.’ Cal rose to take a dish towel from the bar of the oven and went over to stand at Mairi’s side.

‘It’s been a long night. You’ll be glad to get back to the hotel,’ she smiled.

‘I’ve got some thinking to do.’

‘You’ve been thinking too much, that’s the trouble.’

‘Why don’t you come up with me for a drink?’

‘I’m not sure that’s where I’d want to be seen tonight. Besides I have things to do at home. But thank you.’

‘No, thank you. You’re keeping me right in all of this.’

Mairi’s hand touched his arm comfortingly.

Cal left her and drove through the darkness to the hotel. It took some getting used to for a city boy, the world confined to the arc of the car headlights.

He dined on herring, the hubbub of the bar spilling through into the dining room. He hadn’t eaten the fish since leaving home. His parents had loved herring and potatoes, their Saturday treat. Cal loathed it, the bones, the fish heads stuffed with oats, the salt nipping any cuts on his fingers. The meal was filling and more enjoyable than he remembered, but he still hated the bones.

He bought a bottle of Macallan malt at an inflated price from the lounge bar to take up to his room. The barman gave him a pint tumbler full of ice cubes to go with it.

Only now did he feel the tension in his neck. He ran a hot bath, poured a good measure of whisky over some ice and soaked in the tub. His mind burrowed back in time, sifting through old conversations and episodes for any clue or hint about Mary’s past that he might have missed.

There was family in Canada and the United States, he knew that, distant ties with people whose forebears had gone before, but he was sure there had never been any mention of Mary being over there. More than that, when he’d first holidayed abroad with his friends, he remembered her joking that Glasgow was far enough for her. The longer he dwelt upon it, the more convinced he was that her time in Canada was never referred to.