That evening, with young Finlay off at a ballet class that would keep him busy until shortly before nine, and with Fat Bob having offered to come in at seven-thirty to make dinner, Big Lou had an hour-and-a-half at her disposal in which to engage in her favourite pursuit – reading. A keen reader as a child, she had been introduced to the works of Lewis Grassic Gibbon when she was barely twelve. Of course, Grassic Gibbon’s Sunset Song was local – Big Lou’s family farm, Snell Mains, could have been one of the farms depicted in the novel – and this helped to develop her feeling for fiction with a strong sense of place. She had in due course discovered Edwin Muir and George Mackay Brown, both of whom had inspired her to take one of the few holidays she had ever allowed herself – a fortnight spent staying in Stromness and Kirkwall.