Uncle Hamish swivelled his big, grey head and gazed gloomily at me. His eyes looked cold and jelly-like; they reminded me of frog-spawn discovered in some ditch. "'All the gods are false. Faith itself is idolatry, " Uncle Hamish breathed, staring at me. I shivered. "Can you credit that, Prentice?" He looked down, away from me, shaking his head.

Hamish returned his gaze to the puzzle tray. His thumbs kept circling. "I can't remember exactly what he said," Hamish whispered, and then sighed. "But he jumped off the wall and ran over to the church. He started climbing."

I heard my mother sob once, very quietly.

"I had to climb over the wall," Hamish breathed, "Gate was locked. By the time I got there he was out of reach. I thought he was shinning up a drainpipe. Just assumed. Heard rumbles, I think, but… didn't think anything of it. No flashes, that I can remember. Kenneth was yelling and swearing and shouting imprecations; calling down all sorts of punishment; I was trying to get him to come down; told him he'd fall; told him the police were coming; told him to think of his family. But he kept climbing."

I studied my hands in the pink-tinged light, turning them over and looking at the lines on my palm, the veins on the back. I tried to imagine dad, climbing up that tower, hauling himself up, hand over hand, sweating and straining in the darkness, trusting to his own strength and the cool metal strip beneath his hands.

The block beneath me was silent now; the last of the waves had retreated from it and were breaking further down the beach as the tide went out. The sky was still gaudy with crimson clouds, though much of the brightness had gone. I glanced at my watch. I ought to be jumping down off this thing and heading back to the road; it was a rough hike over the headland, and dangerous in the dark. But the red streaks of the clouds were dissolving as the sunset went on, leaving the sky clear above me. This near the centre of the year, on a clear night, it would never get totally dark. I had a while yet, but I wouldn't leave it too late; mum would worry. That would just be the cherry on it, me taking the Crow Road too.

Uncle Hamish took another sip of his tea, frowned at the cup and spat the tea back into it. "Cold," he said apologetically to his wife. He dabbed at his lips with his handkerchief. I realised only then I hadn't touched the cup that Aunt Tone had poured for me.

Hamish went on: "There was a very strange noise, a sort of humming noise seemed to come from under my feet, from the stones of the church. Couldn't work out what it was, thought it was the drink or just the effect of looking up like that, craning my neck. But it wouldn't go away, and it got louder and I felt my hair stand on end. I shouted up to Kenneth; he was about half-way up, still climbing. Then there was a flash, a blinding flash.

"Saw a glowing red line in front of me, like a vein of burning blood, like lava, in front of me. Noise terrific. Smell of sulphur; something of that nature; smell of the devil, though I think that was just coincidence. Fell down. Half blind, thought a bomb had gone off. Heard ringing, like the church bells all going on at once." Uncle Hamish went to sip from his tea again, then thought the better of it and put the cup back on the saucer. "Realised it had been lightning. I still couldn't believe it; found Kenneth behind me, lying on the grass and a sort of slab thing, over a grave. Hands burned. Been climbing the lightning conductor, blew him off. Don't know if that would have killed him, but he'd landed on the stone. Dead. Blood from his head." Hamish looked slowly over at mum, who was crying silently. "Sorry," he told her.

She didn't say anything.

"Idiot," I whispered, sitting there on Darren's great grey concrete block. "Idiot," I said, and for once I wasn't talking to myself. "Idiot!" I shouted at the sky. "IDIOT!" I bellowed, hands clawing at the pitted concrete surface beneath me. "IDIOT!" I screamed, emptying my lungs to the soft sea airs. Coughing and choking, I sat there, tears in my eyes, breathing hard. Eventually I wiped my nose on my shirt sleeve, feeling like a little kid again, and then sniffed, swallowed, and breathed slower, clenching my teeth to stop my jaw trembling.

I sat back, shivering, legs out straight in front, arms behind, hands splayed on the rough concrete. I thought about them all. Dad, falling; Grandma Margot, falling. Darren, broken against the tomb-white concrete of a council litter bin; Aunt Fiona, through the windscreen of the Aston Martin, neck snapped, into the young trees by the roadside… and who knew what had happened to Rory? Well, in a day or two I was going to start trying to find out.

So far mum and I — with Ashley's help — had only dealt with the papers and files we had to, to deal with the legal formalities. But there was a lot more stuff to go through, and somewhere in all that bumf there might be something that would tell us about Uncle Rory, and why dad had always been so sure his brother was still alive.

But for all we knew he'd died a roadside death, too.

Uncle Hamish turned to me. "Swear he was still alive." He nodded, frowning at me. I raised my eyebrows, feeling very cold inside. Hamish nodded again. "Still alive; he said something to me. I swear Kenneth said, 'See? " Hamish shook his head. "Said that to me; said, 'See? without opening his eyes." He looked down at his rotating thumbs. His frown seemed to stop them. "That was what he said; and it was so… wrong; such a silly, silly thing to say, that I thought I must have only thought I heard it, but I'm sure, that's what he said. 'See? " Uncle Hamish shook his head. "'See? " He kept shaking his head. "'See? " He turned to me. "Can you credit that, Prentice?"

He looked away again before I could think of what to say. "'See? " he repeated to the tray with the ruined puzzle, and shook his head again. 'See? .

"Excuse me." Mum got up and left the room, crying.

Hamish stared at the cardboard puzzle. Aunt Antonia sat at the end of the bed, staring hollow-eyed at her silent husband. The tray over Uncle Hamish's legs started to vibrate. I could see the duvet over Uncle Hamish's thighs shaking. The bed began to squeak. My uncle stared, appalled, at the tray on his lap, as the little grey pieces of the up-turned puzzle migrated across the vibrating surface of the tray, gradually collecting against one edge.

The spasms in Uncle Hamish's legs seemed to grow more severe; the cup of tea I'd put on the bedside table near my right elbow snowed a concentric pattern ot standing ripples. I suddenly thought of the scene in The Unbelievable Prevalence of Bonking, when the tanks enter Prague. Uncle Hamish made a strange keening noise; Aunt Tone patted his feet under the duvet and rose from the end of the bed.

"I'll get your pills, dear."

She left the room. Hamish turned to me, his whole body shaking now, the puzzle on the tray starting to break up as the tray bounced up and down beneath it. "Jealous," Hamish croaked through clenched teeth. "Jealous, Prentice; jealous! Jealous! Jealous God! Jealous!"

I got up slowly, patted his trembling hands and smiled.

I've always had this fantasy that, after Uncle Rory borrowed his flat-mate Andy's motorbike and headed off into the sunset, he crashed somewhere, maybe coming down to Gallanach; came off the road and fell down some gully nobody's looked in for the last ten years, or — rather more likely, I suppose — crashed into the water, and there's a Suzuki 185 GT lying just under the waves of Loch Lomond, or Loch Long, or Loch Fyne, its rider somehow entangled in it, reduced by now to a skeleton in borrowed leathers, somewhere underwater, perhaps between here and Glasgow; and we all pass it every time we make the journey, maybe only a few tens of metres away from him, and very possibly will never know.