"Maybe not," Prentice said. He looked back at Kenneth. "But you might be wrong about the things you're so busy telling us the truth about."

"I did say I wasn't certain."

"Yeah? What about Darren?"

Kenneth looked puzzled. He shook his head. "No, you've lost me; what do you —»

"I can't believe he's just… gone, like that, Ken. I can't believe there isn't something left, some sort of continuity. What was the point of it all, otherwise?"

Kenneth put the rod down, clasped his hands. "You think Darren's… personality is still around, somewhere?"

"Why not? How can he be such a great guy, and clever and just… just a good friend, and some fuckwit forgetting to look both ways cancels out all that… probably not even a fuckwit; probably some ordinary guy thinking about something else… How…

Prentice shoved his hands under his oxters, rocked forward, head down. "God, I hate getting inarticulate."

"Prentice, I'm sorry. Maybe it sounds brutal, but that's just the way it is. Consciousness… goodness, whatever; they haven't got any momentum. They can stop in an instant, just snuffed out. It happens all the time; it's happening right now, all over the world; and Darren was hardly an extreme example of life's injustice, death's injustice."

"I know!" Prentice put his hands up to the jacket hood, over his ears. "I know all that! I know it's happening all the time; I know the death squads are torturing children and the Israelis are behaving like Nazis and Pol Pot's preparing his come-back tour; you keep telling us; you always told us! And people just scream and die; get tortured to death because they're poor or they help the poor or they wrote a pamphlet or they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time; and nobody comes to rescue them, and the torturers never get punished; they retire, they even survive revolutions sometimes because they have such fucking useful skills, and no super-hero comes to save the people being tortured, no Rambo bursts in; no retribution; no justice; nothing… and that's just it! There has to be something more than that!"

"Why?" Kenneth said, trying not to sound angry. "Just because we feel that way? One wee daft species, on one wee daft planet circling one wee daft star in one wee daft galaxy; us? Barely capable of crawling into space yet; capable of feeding everybody but… nyaa, can't be bothered? Just because we think there must be something more and a few crazy desert cults infect the world with their cruel ideas; that's what makes the soul a certainty and heaven a must?" Kenneth sat back, shaking his head. "Prentice, I'm sorry, but I expected better of you. I thought you were smart. Shit; Darren dies and you miss Rory, so you think, 'Bugger me; must be a geezer with the long flowing white beard after all.»

"I didn't say —»

"What about your Aunt Kay?" Kenneth said. "Your mum's friend; she did believe; must be a God; prayed every night, went to church, practically claimed she had a vision once, and then she gets married, her husband dies of cancer within a year and the baby just stops breathing in its cot one night. So she stops believing. Told me that herself; said she couldn't believe in a God that would do that! What sort of faith is that? What sort of blinkered outlook on the world is it? Didn't she believe anybody ever died 'tragically' before? Didn't she ever read her precious fucking Bible with its catalogue of atrocities? Didn't she believe the Holocaust had happened, the death camps ever existed? Or did none of that matter because it had all happened to somebody else?"

"That's all you can do, isn't it?" Prentice shouted back. "Shout people down; skim a few useful anecdotes and bite-sized facts and always find something different to what they've said!"

"Oh I'm sorry! I thought it was called argument."

"No, it's called being over-bearing!"

"Okay!" Kenneth spread his arms out wide. "Okay." He sat still for a time, while Prentice remained hunched and tense-looking in the bows. When Prentice didn't say anything, Kenneth sighed. "Prentice; you have to make up your own mind about these things. I… both your mother and I have always tried to bring you up to think for yourself. I admit it pains me to think you… you might be contemplating letting other people, or some… some doctrine start thinking for you, even for comfort's sake, because —»

"Dad," Prentice said loudly, looking up at the grey clouds. "I just don't want to talk about it, okay?"

"I'm just trying —»

"Well, stop!" Prentice whirled round, and Kenneth could have wept to see the expression on the face of his son: pained and desperate and close to tears if he wasn't crying already; the rain made it hard to tell. "Just leave me alone!"

Kenneth looked down, massaged the sides of his nose with his fingers, then took a deep breath. Prentice turned away from him again.

Kenneth stowed the fishing rod, looked round the flat, rain-battered waters of the small loch, and remembered that hot, calm day, thirty years earlier, on another fishing trip that had ended quite differently.

He took up the oars. "Let's head back in, all right?"

Prentice didn't say anything.

"Fergus, darling! You're soaked! Oh; you've brought some little friends with you, have you?"

"Yes, mother."

"Good afternoon, Mrs Urvill."

"Oh, it's young Kenneth McHoan. Didn't see you under that hood. Well, jolly good; come in. Take off your coats. Fergus, darling; close that door."

Fergus closed the door. "This is Lachlan Watt. His dad works in our factory."

"Oh, really? Yes. Well… You've all been out playing, have you?"

Mrs Urvill took their coats, handling Lachy's tattered and greasy-looking jacket with some distaste. She hung the dripping garments up on hooks. The rear porch of the Urvill's rambling house, at the foot of Barsloisnoch hill, beyond the north-west limits of Gallanach, smelled somehow cosy and damp at the same time.

"Now, I dare say you young men could do with some tea, am I right?"

Mrs Urvill was a tall, aristocratic-looking lady Kenneth always remembered as wearing a head-scarf. She wasn't that day; she wore a tweed skirt, sweater, and a pearl necklace which she kept fingering.

She made them tea, accompanied by some slices of bread and bramble jelly. This was served at a small table in Fergus's room, on the first floor.

Fergus had one slice of bread, and Kenneth managed two before Lachy wolfed all the rest. The war was only over a few months, and rationing was still in force. Lachy sat back, belched. "That was rerr," he said. He wiped his mouth on the frayed sleeve of his jumper. "See the breed in our hoose; it's green, so it is."

"What?" said Kenneth.

"What rot," Fergus said, sipping his tea.

"Aye it is," Lachy said, pointing one grubby finger at Fergus.

"Green bread?" Kenneth said, grinning.

"Aye, an" ah'll tell ye why, tae, but ye've goat tae promise no tae tell anybudy."

"Okay," Kenneth said, sitting forwards, head in hands.

"Hmm, I suppose so," Fergus agreed unenthusiastically.

Lachy glanced from side to side. "It's the petrol," he said, voice low.

"The petrol?" Kenneth didn't understand.

"Load of absolute rot, if you ask me," Fergus sneered.

"Na; it's true," Lachlan said. "See the Navy boys, oot oan the flyin boat base?"

"Aye," said Kenneth, frowning.

"They pit this green dye in thur petrol, an if yer foun wi that in the tank uv yer motor car, ye get the jile. But if ye pit the petrol through breed, the dye comes oot, an ye can use the petrol an naebudy kens a thing. It's true." He sat back. "An that's why we huv green breed in oor hoose, sometimes."

"Woof," Kenneth said, fascinated. "Bet it tastes horrible!"

"That's illegal," Fergus said. "My mother knows the C.O. at the base; if I told her she'd tell him and you'd probably all be arrested and you would get the jail."