'Where? In the Med?' she asked.

'Around the Hebrides, mostly. I like the buck and roll of the Minch.'

'Och!' groaned Rona. 'Give me the sunshine and those beautiful Italian men any day.' She smiled at him, teasing and fond.

It was dark, like his looks, and she played with his finger-tips across the table in the corner. The club, sultry, and Fraser drinking heavily from a bottle of wine : she wiped the sweat from her brow carefully and stared in her glass.

'I'll bet she had a hangover!' the woman said, softly, looking up at his eyes.

'Serves her right' he muttered moodily. He felt her shoe-less foot beneath the table.

'Did she blame it all on you?'

'Don't know. I haven't seen her today.' He scowled. But she smiled faintly to herself and sipped her wine.

The jazz-musicians seemed to find a resonant release and sad beauty, as a dark singer pitched mournfully. 'All, or Nothing at All' she sighed. In the shadowed club, yawning with diners and languorous converse, smoke and the taste of nicotine, perfume and sweat, the music filled the air with doleful feeling, breaking in waves across his weary mind.

Rona lit a cheroot, though she smoked infrequently. But he was enjoying a cigar, after all. Across the candle-lit table, she said 'I want you' by her presence there : the singer's voice expressing the same feeling that stirred and surfaced in her own body.

Fraser looked at her : her crimson brushed-silk dress, the colour of clotted-blood, yet asking to be touched and stroked. He had felt its softness on her rolling hips and curves as they came in. It seemed to invite - violence, affray. Her auburn hair held down with a matching Alice hairband : simple irony and play on innocence. It engaged desire. The strident bangles round her wrist chinked and jostled, as she raised her glass; her tongue, escaping over-played dark lips, explored and licked the lingering taste of wine : licking as well the flavour of desire with her conscious powers of feminine seduction. He drank again, heavily, and the blood-red wine tasted metallic as it cut his throat.

In the shadows, he felt her hand upon his thigh, under the table. It made his senses reel. He found himself drawn to her physically. She seemed so young, so healthy, fit; and she offered release for his dark feelings. He smelt her presence and its amorous charm.

The bottle was empty and he wanted to order another, but he could not gain the waiter's attention. It annoyed him, and he suppressed a scowl.

Rona looked back at the moody man who sat before her in the darkened corner. He was dressed in black, and the stifling heat only added to his sleek allure. She found him undeniably attractive : his pent-up power excited her.

'She doesn't own you,' she said. 'No-one can own you. Your sexuality belongs to you.' Her eyes more sharply-focused than his.

He looked back but didn't answer.

'The thing is, Fraser, everyone has a right to be happy in life. It's not a matter of moral rules.' Her teeth glinted, almost a snarl. 'It's simply a matter of emotional need. If someone can make you happy then fine : if not, for God's sake find someone who can...'

She pressed his hand and smiled at him.

'Don't waste your life! The greatest morality is to ourselves : otherwise we shrivel up and become useless to anyone...'

Shrivel up. That's how it felt with his wife. A succession of weary encounters and efforts.

'But it's not as simple as that,' he complained. 'Your private life - it's just not private. It has an effect on everything else.'

'Why should it?' she demanded. 'Sex should be natural as sleeping or waking, enjoying a beautiful view, or a meal. But we've tied it all up with 'possession' and 'ownership' and the unnatural rules of repressive ideals.' She looked at him brashly. 'The social restraint on sexual expression denies the truth of our feelings and nature : it's an imposed morality, a perverse control. She doesn't own you!' Rona repeated.

They had talked about it all before. Sexual freedom, she always said, was one of the main vitalities of life : that bring us alive and teach us the value and beauty of living. A world of free bodily expression would be more healthy and vital, she asserted.

'We are cut off from so many people by imposed morality. I am cut off from you.'

He wasn't listening. He had caught the waiter's eye, and the surly youth came dawdling over.

Rona searched in her Prada bag and pulled out some papers. As the waiter stalked off, she pushed them at Fraser.

'This is where we will stay for my birthday. It's a gorgeous hotel and it's right on the river. Darling! We're going to be so beautiful together.'

He felt the sweetness of her obsession, her given fondness, and eager desire. Back at the Castle there was nothing like this : just his wife's begrudging sufferance of him. But across the table, Rona smiled excitedly. She needed his love. He met her where she most wanted him : direct, and still, and rough, enlocked. They met each other, each other's needs. There was an innocence, after all, about her ardour. And a given honesty of a kind.

The waiter returned with the wrong bottle.

'But this is the one you ordered, sir.'

'Don't give me that' barked Fraser crossly. He kept the wine, though he threatened not to pay. Then he reached for his inside pocket and handed a wallet to Rona with a moody smile. Inside, two airline tickets for Paris.

Her eyes sparkled.

'You beautiful man,' she whispered fondly. 'You beautiful, beautiful man. Leave her, Fraser. Stay with me tonight.' Their fingers entangled.

Then she laughed with release.

'I'll take you up the Eiffel Tower...'

'No thanks' he muttered.

'Why not?'

He frowned.

'It's heights,' he said. 'I'm hopeless with heights. Just a physical thing - it's not that I'm scared. But I can't even climb a ladder without the rest of the world going round and round.'

She admired him for his forthright honesty. It made her love him. Her body felt moist in the sweltering heat; felt open to him. And she thrilled again. She couldn't believe that he would come.

'You're doing nothing wrong,' she said, as he drank darkly. 'People change, our needs change. Sometimes relationships just slip away - it's natural, it's reasonable...'

Yet Fraser was troubled by this simplicity. Deep down she sensed it, though she could not acknowledge it to herself.

'She's not right for you any more. I can see it, darling...'

'Any fool can...'

'You can't hold on to things, you see. Why should you? It's the cycle of change which keeps us vital : changing, moving on, but staying alive.'

Something in her words was tripping him up.

'You can't let the past cling on to you. You can only live in the present, Fraser, and live it with freedom and intensity.' She fingered the tickets and beamed at him. 'It's almost a sacred commitment,' she said. 'More sacred anyway than a marriage of living death and dull indifference...'

Fraser emptied his glass again. He was struggling to pronounce his words.

'So you're free to fuck off with somebody else tomorrow, if you feel like it...'

'Definitely. We should all be free. We should only do things because we want to.'

It seemed reasonable. She held his hand, and he felt her foot, teasing him softly.

'You can only live for now!' she urged, staring in his eyes which were dulled by the wine.

'Now' he repeated, but he frowned to himself. Alasdair, his forebears, the portraits in the Castle. Their years as a family. There was surely something more. And yet it seemed insoluble.

She did not see his troubled thoughts. Her eyes shone and she smiled directly... it was all so simple to her, to her sharp intelligence; all so simple on the instant surface of her keen existence. She wanted him now.

It should be so easy, yet Fraser knew there was something holding him, as if enmeshed by tangled constraints; by a whole complex of uneasy conditions.

'I want to set you free' she was saying. He heard her pleading, his mind remote.

He drank again, and pointed at her.

'Did I ever tell you about my boy?' he smiled and lurched forward. 'Did I ever tell you about the time I took him out on the Minch when he was nine?'

She sat and listened.

'Now that was something!' he said with a flourish. 'Now that was something.'

'You never talk about Roberta though...'

He tipped his glass, small finger pricking outwards, hand shaking slightly. Then he leant right forward.

'I'll tell you something' he whispered to her. 'I'll bloody tell you something...' He pinched her cheek.

'I love that girl. She means the world to me. Do you understand? She means the world to me.'

Rona laughed fondly at his rambling incoherence.

'You're fuckin' drunk...' she teased him. 'Come back wi' me now and stay the night.'

'Tomorrow!' he said. 'I'll stay tomorrow. I'll pack some clothes and join you then. Then 'Gay Paris' and 'nous sommes fucked'...' He laughed violently, amused at himself.

'No, Fraser. Stay with me tonight.' She gripped his wrists. 'She's not worth it. Don't shrivel up, Fraser. Don't shrivel up and die, my darling!'

He pushed away roughly.

'Tomorrow' he insisted, with all the obduracy of a drunken man, and glowered darkly.

The indolent waiter came up with the bill, and Fraser slammed his fist on the table.

'I'm not paying for this, you prat!'

'You've drunk half of it. What do you expect?'

He felt argumentative and out of sorts, his temper boiling up in the heat.

'You can drink the rest. It tastes like piss. I never ordered this bottle,' he said.

'You did' the waiter insisted bluntly.

The darkness of violence rose from within, and Fraser stood up and confronted the man. He picked up the half-full bottle and rocked.

'It tastes like piss. You taste it,' he said.

The waiter scowled.

'You taste it' said Fraser.

He splashed some wine down the young man's front.

'You taste the piss!' he laughed discordantly.

Rona got up and stood between them.

'You taste it then...' he murmured fondly. 'You taste it then...'

She drank from the bottle, as he tipped it toward her, amused by her compliance, till it ran from her lips...

'C'mon, you prick!' she said, kissing his mouth, and he tasted the wine like blood on her tongue.

She brushed down his jacket, and shoved him affectionately towards the gents. Then she paid with her card.

Outside in the darkness, the heat of the summer evening still persisting, they made their way to Fraser's car, parked in the still pitch-blackness of the night.

She pushed him back against it and drew close, taunting him to arousal with her kisses. She found him so desirable and driven : driven darkly by the strength of his compulsion.

'I want you, Fraser. I need you, bastard!' Rona complained. He felt the brushed silk of her dress, her pressing butt : a hand against the inside of his leg.

Naked desire.

And unashamed. She accosted his face, molesting his senses with her sweetness. He was dazed and drunken, and she tore at his clothing and stretched up onto him.

He felt her sweat as she tried to kiss him, her hot breath and insistent hands. Yet he pulled away.

'Don't be a wimp, Fraser! You know you want it!' She gripped him with her nails. 'You're not going back to her. You're going' - she slipped her hand beneath his belt - 'to come and stay with me tonight.'

But he insisted darkly.

'Tomorrow,' he said. 'I'll be with you tomorrow.' His speech was slurred and indistinct.

He opened the door and got inside, behind the wheel.

'I'll drive' she said. 'You've had too much.'

'You drive!' he laughed. 'I know your game!'

'Get over, ye arse' she complained fondly, and pushed him across to the other seat. His mind was blotting out in the dark.

Some lights came swinging into view, and Rona made out a pick-up truck. She stared hard. Wilson?

A door slammed and the tall outline of Jim Wilson approached her purposefully.

'Thank fuck I've found you' he said to her. Rona's quick mind was working fast. Jim and his drinking buddy, Nick MacFarlane, were often at the far end of her bar : playing the darts or drinking whisky. Or else, they'd venture on the hill, and poaching Fraser's deer, netting his salmon, they'd come and knock on her kitchen door. But otherwise, she hardly ever saw them. Nick was away with his lorry all week, and Jim stayed at the garage. So what, she wondered, was he doing here?

'A problem, Jim?'

'They picked up Nick. Took him in for questioning...' his voice dropped... 'about the goods.' Her face grew pinched, in the pick-up's lights. Fraser was murmuring in the car.

'It's alright,' Wilson carried on. 'They had to let him go again. Thank Christ he had none on him, though!'

'But who the fuck has told the polis?' She frowned and couldn't work it out.

'It wisnae one of us, for sure.'

She looked at the man inside the car. She had to phone MacFarlane up.

'Aye well : thanks Jim.'

She watched him leave, then clambered into the driver's seat.

'Come on, you lump!' she said to Fraser. 'I'll drive ye home. I can return the car tomorrow...'

He slipped his hand upon her knee, and she smiled at his impotency, but her mind was now on other things. 'How much did the polis know about Charlie? And who the fuck had grassed them up?'

She drove petulantly through the night, Fraser beside her, lost and drunk, lolling in and out of sleep. Flickering images of the road leapt up before him and were gone. A fox crossed the highway ahead of them, then disappeared in the shady woods.

She caressed him softly at Ardfinnan, then drove away and was gone again. The Castle rose gaunt against the starlit sky, almost in darkness, and silent as death.

Fraser looked up at the blur of stars, swept round to the trees and the pastures beyond. Somewhere out there... somewhere out there... his children were roaming... his boy... his girl. He walked across to the paddock fence, where he'd watch his daughter on her first pony. My girl, my girl...

'Roberta!' he called in the empty darkness. 'Roberta!' in his drunken voice. It echoed around the silent woods. What if some mishap had happened to them? What if they'd fallen? 'Roberta!' he cried.

He turned and wound back to the Castle, and let himself in.

It was all very well for her to say Gordon could manage. But what if he'd fallen? Then who was this Wiggy they'd met? And where were they now? He'd call the police.

Fumbling in the dark with the phone book, he found the number of his friend Rankin, the Chief Constable.

'I'll sort this one out,' he said in a stupor, stabbing at the numbers. 'I'll bloody well sort this one out for myself.'

The phone was ringing at the other end.

'If that idiot teacher's lost my children...'

The phone was still ringing.

'Come on, come on...'

Someone picked up the other end.

'Is that Chief Constable Rankin?'

'Aye.'

'I want to report a boy and a girl missing. Two boys in fact.'

'Are you mad? How did you get my number?'

'It's me.'

'Who?'

'Fraser Maclean.'

'Fraser! What the hell do you think you're about? It's one in the morning.'

'Never mind that. Now listen, Rankin. My children went off in the mountains...'

'On their own?'

'No, with their teacher. But I don't know what's happened to them.'

'Now you listen, Maclean. I've the police from three regions, a battalion of soldiers, anti-terrorist squads, two frigates, and all the security services down on my back - not to mention the press - and you phone me up in the middle of night about three children? Are you out of your mind?'

'There's this man called Wiggy...'

'Wiggy!'

'Will you listen to me? There's this man called Wiggy...'

'No I will not listen to you, Fraser Maclean. Wiggy? Wiggy! I'm not interested in anyone called Wiggy! Do you realise just who has gone missing out there?'

'But my children...'

'If your children aren't back by the end of next week, call the rescue. Call the fire-brigade. Call the bloody scouts. But don't call the police. We've got no manpower left. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to my bed. Goodnight.'

The line went dead.

Fraser sat down in a chair in the dark; just the half-light seeping in from the hall. The Castle seemed empty : only the portraits of his forebears around him, looking down from the walls with a silent severity.

One of the deerhounds loped in and approached him, and he grabbed it affectionately, roughing its coat. He held it by its head, and brought it to his.

'You're a lovely boy, aren't you? Heh? Where have you been?'

The dog whimpered softly and its tail wagged excitedly.

'You understand, don't you? You understand.'

He must have fallen asleep. When he woke, the clock in the hall had just struck two.

'Come on, Jingo' he said. 'It's time for your bed.'

He led the animal to the kitchen, and it turned in its basket two or three times, got comfortable, and lowered its head.

But Fraser Maclean found no rest in his sleep : no stillness, no peace, and no feeling of wholeness... just disturbances, fragments of dreams, and concern.

Next morning, Caroline was ice-cool at breakfast, distant and critical. For minutes, the slow tick of the clock conversed with itself. Then she clattered her spoon.

'You were late back, last night. With her, I suppose?'

Fraser tensed.

'No, as it happens. Well, not what you think.'

'It doesn't seem to matter what I think,' she answered.

He gritted his teeth. What was the point of it all? He just wanted release - from this constant restraint and insufferable gloom.

'Oh, I suppose I should be happy,' he finally snapped, 'with the way you conducted yourself at the Ball.'

'It wasn't me who danced with a whore!' she shouted.

Then he quietened.

'You don't own me, Caroline.'

'Well neither does she!'

'At least she didn't make a spectacle of herself.'

There was silence. Fraser got up and went to the window.

'Anyway,' he said, with his back to his wife, 'I'll be staying with Rona when I see her tonight... give you some peace... I have packed up some things...'

Caroline was outwardly cool and detached, but she was fumbling with her napkin, under the table.

'If that's what you want,' she replied with no passion. She felt tired and resigned.

A car was approaching on the gravel drive. Rona got out, in the jaunty sunlight. Then she strode in unasked and threw Fraser the keys.

'It's a bonnie morning,' she remarked brightly.

Caroline eyed this intrusion with hateful disdain : like nettles, like ivy, invading her world.

'I gather he's staying with you tonight. You realise what this will do to his children?'

Fraser stepped forward.

'How can you talk about children to her? What children? Where the hell are they, our children?'

Caroline stood up and looked at her husband.

'You're weak, Fraser. Behind all that charm, behind the good looks and the masculine pose, you're weak.'

'Don't listen to her' Rona snapped. But it stung.

He picked up her favourite porcelain vase, and hurled it across at the opposite wall. Then he stalked out.

Rona followed after him, with a triumphant smile : eyes, sharp and determined and brash.

'You'll never be happy together, you know.'

Rona turned round at the door, and she smiled - a patronising smile of contempt and pity.

'Grow up, Caroline' she grinned with a sneer.

Moments later, the car had swept off down the drive.

In the empty room, the mother stared at the broken pieces of porcelain on the floor. She left them lying there. Then vacantly, she gazed across the driveway garden and saw the nettles, the overgrowth : the wilderness threatening to overwhelm; always, the wilds beyond, trying to encroach... but she didn't seem to care any more.

A portrait of her children - pictured innocence - looked down from a photograph perched on the shelf.

She bent, convulsed, and rocked in tears.

* * *