Old Con, as everyone knew, had spent a lifetime literally pickling his nerves in alcohol, and for the five years leading up to his death he had been paralysed from the waist down. She had been at home in her cottage just outside Glenfinnan in Inverness-shire when he first became ill, and she was not at all amused. As far as she had been concerned he was part of a life she had left behind and would never return to, even if he had remained, against her will, in the back of her mind. She'd told the doctors this five years ago, when the long final act started. She'd do the necessary when the time came, and that was more to do with her own need to round things off than affection for Con, but she would not devote her life to caring for him indefinitely.