S Bolton - Sacrifice

'What's going on?' I said, thinking I was using that phrase far too often these days.

Gifford turned to me. 'My predecessor. Medical director here for fifteen years before his retirement. Something of a mentor for me. Give him my regards, won't you?'

I looked at Duncan.

'Wake up, Tor,' he said irritably. 'He's talking about Dad.'

OK, really not keeping up here. 'Your father worked in Edinburgh. You told me.'

Shortly after we'd met, Duncan had told me his father was a doctor, an anaesthetist, and naturally I'd been interested. He'd also told me that he'd worked away from home for most of his childhood, coming back only at weekends. I'd always assumed it went some way towards explaining why Duncan's family are the way they are.

'He came back,' said Duncan, 'round about the time I went to university. Where's your car?'

'Haven't a clue,' I responded. Things had been moving pretty fast lately and I'd lost track.

'Parked outside Sergeant Tulloch's house,' said Gifford. 'Safe enough – one would hope.'

I fell asleep minutes after Duncan started driving. My dreams were strange, disjointed ones about being in theatre with no notes and no proper instruments. The patient was Duncan's father and the face of the scrub nurse peering at me over her mask was that of Duncan's mother, Elspeth. We were in one of the original anatomy theatres, with a central operating table and circles of seats rising ever higher around it. Every seat was filled by someone I knew: Dana, Andy Dunn, Stephen Renney, my parents, my three brothers, friends from university, my old Girl Guide leader. I didn't have to be Sigmund Freud to recognize a classic anxiety dream. I jerked awake at one point when Duncan braked hard to avoid a stray sheep. We were not on the road home.

'Where are we going?' I asked.

'Westing,' he replied. Westing was his parents' home on Unst, the place where he'd been born and brought up.

I thought for a moment. 'Who's looking after the horses?'

'Mary said she'd come over.'

I nodded. Mary was a local girl who helped me with feeding and exercising on my busy days. She knew the horses well and they knew her. They'd be fine. My eyelids were sinking again when I wondered if I should tell Duncan what had happened the night before. I also wanted to ask him what he knew about Tronal.

I glanced over. He was staring straight ahead, face muscles tight as though he was concentrating hard, even though he knew this road well and it wasn't nearly dark. Mind you, he was driving far too fast. Didn't seem like a good moment to talk. Maybe later. I closed my eyes again and drifted off. I woke briefly during the ferry cross- ing to Yell.

'Gifford phoned you, didn't he?' I asked. 'He told you about the break-in at the house.'

Without looking at me, Duncan nodded. It gave me an uncomfortable feeling. Duncan and Gifford might dislike each other but they were working together to manage me. Or were they? Maybe the intimate little encounter Gifford and I had shared had been staged for Duncan's benefit. Was Gifford playing both of us?

It doesn't take long to drive up Yell and by nine o'clock we were on the last leg of the journey.

Having known Duncan for seven years and been married for five of them, I could still say with complete honesty that I did not know his parents. For a long time I found it strange, even a little distressing, coming, as I do, from a large and noisy, frank and nosy family, amongst whom talk is plentiful and secrets in short supply. That was until I realized that Duncan doesn't know his parents all that well either and that it wasn't something I should take personally.

Duncan is an only child. One who arrived relatively late into the marriage when, presumably, the certainty of children had long since given way to a half-resigned, half-resentful acceptance of something that may never be. One might have thought he would be all the more precious, all the more loved because of that, but that didn't seem to be the case.

They had never been a close family. Whilst his mother was as doting as one would expect an older mother of an only son to be, there was no comfortable familiarity in their relationship. I'd rarely heard them joke together or share memories of childhood. Still less frequently had I heard her scold him. Polite seemed to best summarize the relationship between Duncan and his mother, although occasionally one could have called it uneasy.

The relationship between Duncan and his father was easier to describe, although not to understand. It was formal, courteous and – to my mind, at least – distinctly cold. It wasn't that they didn't talk. They talked quite a lot – about Duncan's work, the economy, current affairs, life on the islands – but they never touched on the personal. They never went sailing together, or for walks over the cliffs. They never sneaked off to the pub while his mother and I were preparing dinner, they didn't fall asleep together in front of the TV afterwards and they never, ever quarrelled.

On the fifteen-minute ferry journey from Yell to Unst I asked, 'Did he retire early?' I had no idea how old Richard was but he barely looked seventy. Yet he hadn't worked in all the time I'd known him. I hadn't mentioned Richard the whole journey but Duncan knew immediately whom I meant.

'Ten years ago,' he replied, looking straight ahead.

'Why?' I asked. If Richard had left his post under some sort of cloud, that at least could explain why he was so reluctant to talk about his former profession.

Duncan shrugged without looking at me. 'He had other things to do. And he'd groomed his successor.'

'Gifford.'

Duncan was silent.

'What is it between you two?' I said.

Then he looked at me. 'Do I need to ask you that?'

'He said he stole your girlfriend.'

The light disappeared from Duncan's eyes and for a moment the face looking back at me was not one I recognized. Then he gave a sharp, angry laugh.

'In his dreams.'

The ferry was docking and the three other cars making the late crossing had started their engines. Duncan turned on the ignition. As the ferry engines roared up and the heavy harbour ramp slammed down, he muttered something under his breath, but I didn't dare ask him to repeat himself.

UNST, LYING ON THE SAME LATITUDE AS SOUTHERN Greenland, is home to around seven hundred people and fifty thousand puffins. The most northerly of all the inhabited British islands, it measures roughly twelve miles long and five miles wide, with one main road, the A968, running from the south-eastern ferry port at Belmont up to Norwich in the north-east.

Two miles after leaving the ferry we turned left along a single- track road and started to drive up and down the shore-edged hills. At the end of the road, just about literally, you find the handful of buildings that is Westing; and the cold, grand, granite house that is Duncan's family home.

Elspeth hugged Duncan and pressed her cold cheek against mine. Richard shook hands with his son and nodded to me. They led us into their large, west-facing sitting room. Drawn by the colours I could see outside, I walked over to the window. Behind me, a short silence fell; I bristled at a sense of being stared at, and then I heard the sound of a cork being pulled.

The sun was almost gone and the sky had turned violet. Close to the shore at Westing stand several massive lava rocks, all that remain of ancient cliffs that in past days withstood the might of the Atlantic. These rocks were black as pitch where the light couldn't catch them, but their beaten and jagged edges glowed like molten gold. The clouds that had been thick and threatening all day had become soft, dusky-pink shadows and the surf bounced at the water's edge like sparks of silver.

There was movement beside me and I turned. It was Richard, holding out a glass of red wine. He stood beside me and we both looked out. The sun had disappeared behind the cliffs of Yell but, in doing so, had draped them in light. They looked as if they had been carved from bronze.