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about to meet hers when Morgan barked impatiently and jumped up between them, splattering mud everywhere.
    Laughing, they held hands tightly and forged their way up the hillside towards China’s forgotten home. Brushing her curls from her face, she shielded her eyes with one hand and stared up at the edifice that crowned the island. Now just visible amongst the woods, it seemed like a ruined castle from a fairy tale, that great grey block of a building with its four impossibly tall chimney stacks known locally as the Grange, built and first owned by the Laird of the island back in 1732. From that day it had always stayed in the hands of the Stuart family.
    “The trees are a lot larger and closer than I remember,” she said.
    “You’ve been gone a good while,” he came back with, just a hint of bitterness catching his voice. Finding what was left of the old hill path, they approached her late aunt’s house, both falling into silence.
    China hung on tight to Donald’s hand, suddenly feeling a little afraid. This was where the memories lived. The good ones and the bad.
    Up close, the house was in a worse state of repair than she had expected. The path directly to the front door was overgrown by spiky bushes, and sprouts of vegetation were peeking out of the crumbling gutters. Its dark slate roof had one or two obvious holes and there were broken fragments of slate scattered over the flagged path. Grimy glass rattled in rotting window frames as she took out the key that had been sent to her solicitors. When she opened the massive front door, the handle came off in her hand.
    “That says it all.” She sighed, her usual clumsiness striking again.
    Morgan barked once and squeezed his way into the gloomy house. Reluctantly, China followed, Donald letting her go in on her own.
    It was the smell she remembered first as she stepped into the hall of the Grange. Even empty, there was still a hint of homemade pies and fresh laundry, despite overtones of damp and mildew. At least there was to her. The old house seemed to whisper to China, telling her ancient tales of its life. Forgotten stories of her own.
    Morgan was obviously pleased to be home, padding up and down the stairs, tail wagging frantically and that massive tongue lolling from one side of his mouth.
    “Why did you leave here, mum?” China asked the shadows.
    “Because she hated this place,” replied Donald from behind her. “Your mam was an outsider. She only came here to marry your da . . . and when he died she couldn’t leave the Isle fast enough, as if she were afraid. That’s what the gossips say.”
    “How do you know all of this?” asked China, suddenly angry that her mother had never told her anything about their life in the Outer Hebrides. Angry that she had died leaving things in such a mess.
    “Your Aunt Beatrice told me some stuff. She said you’d be back some day and I was to tell you what you needed to know.”
    The old house groaned and creaked around them, as if in agreement.
    “Why was my mother afraid?”
    “Beatrice never mentioned why, as if it were a family secret. Maybe it was because she felt an outsider. The open skies worried her. She was never warm, Bee said, not even in summer. Maybe she never really settled. Who knows?” Donald said, staring into her eyes. “But you liked it. When you were a wee girl, you liked it. You liked me . . .”
    China stared at her old childhood playmate, forgotten memories of the two of them tumbling back. The helter-skelter runs down the bracken-strewn paths that crisscrossed the island. Fishing off the pier with an old rod borrowed from Donald’s dad. The roaring peat fires in wintertime and the first sight of the summer’s butterflies, like moving carpets of colour.
    A final kiss from that young boy as she had stepped on to the boat to the mainland, perhaps never to return. He had whispered something in her ear just before she left for that last time. What had he said?
    Only then did China notice