Chapter 6: The Gift

I put the napkin inside my sketchbook, between two blank pages, and went down to Christmas.

The drawing room had a tree that touched the ceiling and three dogs asleep under it on the wrapping paper.

Alasdair was handing out presents in his paper crown.

He got to the long flat parcel I'd brought up in the boot of the Panda.

"This one's from Ailsa," he read. "To Alasdair. Don't let anyone hang it in the loo."

Elspeth snorted.

He tore the paper off.

It was the glen from the shack road in late October, painted from a photo Finlay had once sent the family group chat.

The burn in spate, the bracken gone rust, the hill going up into cloud.

Alasdair didn't say anything for a while.

Then he cleared his throat.

"That's my hill," he said. "That's the exact light."

"It's a bit gloomy," said my mother. "We could put it in the back passage, darling."

"It's going over the fireplace in the hall," said Alasdair. "Where the stag is. Stag can go in the back passage."

"I like the stag."

"You've never once looked at the stag, Isobel."

Elspeth laughed until she coughed.

Mum smiled.

Euan gave me a candle that smelled of fake pine and a card signed with just an E.

My mother gave me a voucher for a salon in Glasgow, "for your nails."

Then Alasdair held up a small square box in brown paper.

"Ailsa. From Finlay."

The room went a bit quiet.

Finlay had never given me anything with his name on it before, except one year a bottle of wine with "from the family" on the tag in Mum's writing.

I opened it.

Inside, in a roll of soft canvas, were six sable brushes.

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