familiarity of the place clutching at me. Every twig on every tree was known to me. Every stone in every ditch. Every pebble on the sweep of the beach.
The tide was out. The bones of the whale still lay on the sand, clean and whitened to a stark frame. Beyond the water rose the mass of Arran, touched with pink in the morning light.
And there was the cottage. Our cottage.
Smoke was rising through the thatch. I watched it for a moment, without understanding, then a howl of rage tore out of me, and I raced down the last stretch of lane.
I reached the gap in the hedge. Robbie Macbean was squatting in the dirt by the kail yard, his breeks around his ankles.
"Get out! What are you doing here? Get out of my house!" I shrieked at him.
He looked up at me, his mouth open, terror in his eyes. He tried to stand but tripped on his breeks and fell on his face in the mud, letting out a wail of anguish.
Someone appeared at the cottage door. It was Jeanie Macbean.
She saw me and flinched, putting out both hands as if to protect herself.
"You've come at last," she said. "I knew you would."
I'd been so hot with rage a moment earlier that I might have rushed at her and attacked her with my fists, but the distress of little Robbie distracted me. I couldn't help myself. I went over to him, picked him up, and set him on his feet.
"Stop that noise, you silly wee man. I'm not going to hurt you."
He ran to his mother, clutching at his breeks, and clung to her skirts, staring at me wide-eyed.
The sight of Mrs. Macbean standing in my own doorway, where I'd seen Granny stand so many, many times, made my fury rise again, but it was cold rage now.
"You took it, then, our cottage, like you always wanted," I said bitterly. "I hope Mr. Macbean's pleased with himself. I hope he's happy now."
To my surprise, Mrs. Macbean let out a shriek of laughter that was wild to the point of madness.
"Happy? In Hell? Happy?"
Before I could say anything, the laughter left her, and she seemed to shrink within herself. She put a weary hand up to her head.
"You'll be wanting to put us out. I won't make a fuss. Give me a day, Maggie, that's all I ask, to find another place."
"What do you mean, another place?" I couldn't understand. "Go home, to your nice big farm, up there on the hill."
She stared at me.
"You don't know, then? You have not heard?"
"Heard what?"
She turned away, as if she was ashamed.
"Come inside for a minute. I'll tell you. You'll be happy enough to hear it, I don't doubt."
I went into my old home with odd reluctance.
The vile toad, Granny had said. The cold snail.
And there was something vile and cold in that familiar room, where the floor was unswept, and Jeanie Macbean's little girls looked at me from thin, pinched faces, their eyes wide with fear. There was a chill of misery, a despair that not even Granny had spread around her.
"He hanged himself," Mrs. Macbean said baldly. "From the old ash tree out by our barn."
"What?"
I had to put a hand down on the old table to steady myself.
"After you—after the trial and all that, it came out. About him and Annie, and the child, and the lies he'd told. The lies! They stripped him of being an Elder, of course. He was up before the Kirk Session. He had to sit for four Sundays on the stool of repentance, in the same gown of sackcloth, no doubt, that you wore. They said he'd lied at your trial. That he'd perjured himself. That he was practically guilty of murder. No one would speak a word to him or to me. They all turned their backs."
Her voice, thin with anguish, was making the hairs stand up on my arms and legs.
"He'd never been a drinking man, Maggie. You know that. But he started on the whiskey then. He stopped working on the farm. He drank every night on his own. He'd get violent and hit the children. And me."
She stopped. I didn't know what to say. I just waited for her to finish.
"He had the drink badly on him one night, and he hit Robbie so hard that he knocked him right out. John thought he'd killed him. His own son. He did love his children, you know. He really did." For