Mhari took his hand. Why no'? Years of fancying him made the opportunity too hard to resist. She expected dryness, callouses, a palm big enough to encase hers. It was all there.

The dog, almost leaping into the air in excitement, dashed ahead of them as Lachlan stamped a path downwards, through grass, sand dunes and lichen-covered rocks. Ahead, a low winter sun hung in the skies—bright enough for sunglasses. Mhari blinked. If Lachlan planned to beat her up or kill her for her unfavourable opinions, so be it.

There were worse places to die.

They got to the shore. Waves lapped the sand, pale yellow and stranded with seaweed. To the right, she could see tiny houses in the distance—Lochalshie. Ahead was water, water, endless water. And Ireland maybe? Birds cawed and dived. A dog and whoever walked him dawdled at the far end, as Lachlan's dog danced around them. The walker raised a hand. Lachlan returned it.

The walker could be another of those folks Lachlan used in the dodgy stuff he got up to.

"I love this place," he said, the hand that still held hers squeezed tighter. "And I'm not a dirty bastard. Just no' always a law-abiding one."

Mhari dropped down, the sand cushioning her landing. Amazing how freeing it felt—no phone, so no need to take a picture, hashtag it and send it out there. Also, time to pay proper attention to what Lachlan had just said to her.

He joined her on the ground, folding his knees down so neatly it was as if he did yoga every day. Mhari and Katya held showing off flexibility against a man. (Unfair of them, but there you go.)

"And I'm no' always a big mouth," she said, waiting for laughter that mocked and disbelieved.

"I know." He lay back, hands behind his head and eyes fixed on the skies. The clouds moved, the fluffy white puffs hypnotic as they drifted from right to left. "You never said a word about Jack McAllan Senior."

There was a story. Some time ago, Jack's father showed up in Lochalshie. Once of this parish, he was far from welcome. In the old days, he was known to drink too much and beat up his then wife. No-one cared when he left the area after the woman summoned the courage to walk away, taking their son with her.

Fast-forward several years and the son found himself an accidental social media star, thanks to his then girlfriend who kept posting cutesy pics of the two of them. Hashtag inlove hashtag Lochalshie hashtag datinggurusman. Jack McAllan Senior rediscovered his paternalistic streak—long buried under alcohol, immaturity and denial. Now, he wanted a son. The universe gave him a fully grown, beautiful boy who shared his dark red hair and aqua-planed facial features.

He turned up at his ex-wife's house drunk and shouted the place down. "My rights!" Aye, the ones he hadn't bothered paying for in twenty-odd years. He stormed into the kitchen, slammed Caroline McLatchie up against the wall, holding her by her throat. Where was he, this precious golden boy?

Ranald McLatchie, his days spent rounding up escaped sheep and shifting cows from field to field, bolted in. Jack Senior jerked his head to face him and tightened his grip on his ex-wife's throat. Where is he? There followed a lot of swear words, anger spewing out all around. No-one ever said a drunk's vocabulary offered original insight into the English language.

Mac, the sheep dog, burst into the kitchen barking his head off, teeth bared, and saving Jack Senior from an assault at the hands of an angry farmer, his strength honed through years of slugging bales and sacks of animal feed on and off tractors and into barns. Jack slunk off. Ranald said he'd phone the police. Caroline shook her head. "Leave it. I'll warn Jack his dad's in town. He'll no' hang around."

Lachlan was Ranald's nephew. The son of his sister Rose, Lachlan adored his uncle. Ranald presented an escape from staidness, his mother a social climber, his father a stalwart of the parish thanks to his head teacher position at the local secondary school. Years ago, Ranald made Lachlan tell his mother he'd left her party and gone to the pub instead—so desperate was Ranald to be with the woman he later married.

A day after the farmhouse assault, Jack McAllan Senior wandered into the Lochside Welcome. Mhari, checking her Instagram feed, watched the man, the red hair and facial features familiar, stumble to the bar. "Pint of heavy," he said, and the bar maid, lips pursed, picked up a glass.

Pint poured, the man found himself a seat. She took a picture of him as discreetly as possible and posted it to the Lochalshie WhatsApp group. "Who's this?" The group was like Google, but better. Guaranteed an answer in seconds.

The red-head was now boasting that he'd voted for Brexit to get rid of filthy foreigners, while the rest of the pub's punters studiously ignored him. He stood up, the move sending his pint glass crashing to the floor and shattering into tiny pieces, and headed for the toilets.

Another man nursing a pint at the bar put his glass down. The barmaid cleared her throat. "Anyone fancy some music?" In front of the retro juke box, she turned to face everyone. "How about Black Sabbath?". No reply, but she adjusted it to ear-splitting volume and carried on polishing glasses.

Mhari, her phone down to two percent, slipped out. Outside, the darkness enveloped her. The village saw little daylight at the end of January. Streetlights weren't numerous, the one immediately outside the Lochside Welcome displayed small golden circles highlighting where people stood.

Lachlan stepped into one of the circles, making her jump. "How are you, Mhari?" He smiled at her, the yellowness highlighting bits of his face and hiding others.

I love you, Lachlan! Why do you always, always spring up on me like this? Of course, she said neither. Brown eyes held hers. Then they slid elsewhere. The man she'd spotted nursing his pint appeared briefly in one of the circles and vanished seconds later.

Noises. Thumps, groans and kicks, boots making contact with soft belly flesh. A nasty crack. The boot must have moved upwards to bones close to the surface of the skin—a nose or a jaw.

"I'm off home," Mhari said, choosing the long route—the streets that took her nowhere near the man with the pint and his victim. When the police turned up at her house the next day to ask if she'd witnessed a serious assault, their appearance did not come as a surprise.

"No, officer," she shook her head. "Ma phone died. I left the pub and went straight home."

Jack McAllan Senior crawled back under the stone he'd emerged from. The police never traced his assailant.