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’em. Now, it’s important to get the whole of the little beggar, head and all, so slide it in like this, twirl it round, pull upwards and, there!’
    Dinah held up for my inspection the blood-bloated beastie, head and all.
    Not sure how to respond, I nodded. Dinah scraped the tick off the hook with her boot and ground it into the sand where it left a faint pink stain. She held out the small green hook for me to take.
    ‘Now that you know how to use it,’ she said, ‘keep it for next time he picks one up.’
    ‘Oh,’ I blustered, baffled by this casual kindness, ‘that’s kind of you but …’
    ‘Oh, don’t be silly, I have another one at home and it’ll save you a fortune in vet bills.’
    ‘I’m hopeless with that kind of thing. I’ve never had a dog before. Sorry, I meant to say, my name’s …’
    Somewhere deep in her clothes Dinah’s phone began to ring. She smiled an apology and stuck her hand down the neck of her jumper.
    ‘Trixie, pleased to – meet you…’ I tailed off.
    Dinah fumbled and jiggled until she located the phone and immediately opened it.
    ‘Sorry, I have to take this. Here,’ she whispered, thrusting the tick-winkling tool into my hand.
    I stood for a few minutes while she shouted into the phone.
    ‘Oh Georgie, please, you know I can’t do that. There must be another option,’ she wailed.
    Dinah turned away out of the wind and remained with her back to me, intermittently shouting and pleading with her caller. I wasn’t sure what to do. Which was more rude: listening in to her private business or leaving without saying goodbye? Slowly I began to realise that she didn’t expect, or indeed, want me to wait, but by then I had foolishly lingered too long.
    ‘Oh for goodness’s sake,’ she yelled, ‘I’m back in London tomorrow. I’ll do it then.’
    So she was just a tourist, then, a high plains drifter, just passing through. That was a shame, we could have walked our dogs together, maybe got together socially. The main reason I’d given up drinking was because I’d had no one to drink with, and I’d never been comfortable with what they say about people who drink alone. She was kind. It was frustrating.
    Now I began to understand a little of what the locals felt about the tourists. What was the point of getting to know them? Why even bother learning their names? They were only here for the weekend, they were free to leave any time they liked, they had a life to return to.
    I dragged the toe of my walking boots through the wet sand and scraped out ‘thank you’. She was still shouting down the phone and didn’t even notice. It was an intense conversation and it looked like it might be a long one. Her mind was probably on the glamorous life she lived in London. By tomorrow Inverfaughie would be a memory, nothing more, but I hoped she’d at least see my pathetic little sand message before the tide came in and washed it away.

Chapter 9
    Bouncer and I came home to discover a canvas shopping bag that had been stuffed through the front door. It was from Ethecom, a free gift for everyone in town apparently. The bag was of untreated calico, not exactly a fashion item, but it looked like it could hold a few kilos of potatoes and it had a certain rustic charm. The hippies were always coming up with ideas to make Inverfaughie more green. Last week they had set up a stall in the village and offered home-made sweets for the kids and a free compost bin for every household. They even gave demonstrations on how to compost. Their philosophy seemed to be that there was no such thing as rubbish, everything was recyclable.
    Brenda, bless her heart, had popped a small goat’s cheese into my canvas bag, thereby rendering the bag useless, at least until it had been through a boil wash. This time the cheese wasn’t wrapped in hygienic plastic, but in recycled paper with a note scrawled on it. ‘Lovely to meet you, Trixie, hope we’ll see you at the meeting tonight?’
    One of