21st December, 1916, St. Lucies Day. The shortest day of the year. Four days before Christmas and two days after his birthday.

   Thomas smiled at the thought. Briefly. In a month which had brought notice of seven hundred thousand, two hundred dead in the seven weeks of Verdun, he, Thomas Gibson, had celebrated his birthday.

   Not that it had been much of a celebration. A glass of whisky with Cynthia in the cocktail bar of The Lodge at Edinbane. A room that had once delighted the world with a wonderful evening. With half-heard snatches of excited, jumbled conversation that bounced from wall to wall. With  shrieks of laughter, the skirl of bagpipe and the clattering of shoes on the wooden panels of the floor as the myriad, swirling, brilliant host danced the night away in celebration of Christmas and promise of the coming new year.

   But now, the room had fallen silent. The party guests become ghosts, their memory no more than the photographs that hung on the walls.

   “Cheers,” Cynthia had said. “Happy birthday.”

   “And to Robbie.”

   Thomas now stood on the northernmost shores of the island, the call of the gulls and the lowly splashing of the rippled waves on the sand slowly, gradually bleaching out the city sound of Edinburgh.  And the imagined hell of the western front.

   He held the driver in his hand. A George Nicoll. She had never played the game but Cynthia had clearly known someone who did.

   “Happy forty-three.”