My brother and I parted with an insincerity only I knew was quite mutual.

As I left the office I met Sister Amanda, coming downstairs with her and Allan's child, Mabon, in her arms.  Amanda is a few years older than Allan, a slim, red-haired woman I've always been on good terms with.  I said hello to her but she just hurried past me, averting her head and clutching the one-year-old to her chest as though I was a monster who might rip the infant from her arms and tear it asunder.  The child looked back at me over her shoulder, his big dark eyes full of what looked like dismayed surprise.  He and his mother disappeared into the office.

The bus took Uncle Mo and me into Stirling half an hour later.  Brother Vitus was sent to see us off.  He carried our bags and seemed monosyllabic with embarrassment or shame.

He waved back, once, perfunctorily, as the bus took us away, and I was left thinking that the contrast with the last time I had left High Easter Offerance - upon the slow rolling river in that misty dawn, with the well-wishes of all the Community sounding hushed but resonant in my ears - could not have been much greater.

I might have cried then, but there was something cold and stony and sharp in me now that seemed to have frozen all my tears.

When we got to the station at Stirling we had twenty minutes to spare before our connecting service with Edinburgh arrived, which time, Uncle Mo informed me - even allowing a couple of minutes for making our way to the appropriate platform - was exactly the decent minimum for drinking a large and comforting vodka and soda at a civilised pace, without unseemly gulping towards the end and an undignified gallop along the platform.  It more or less behoved him so to do, therefore, and he wondered if I would join him in a fast-breaking drink, it being a very early hour in the morning for him, all things and current style of life considered.  I accepted an orange juice and a sandwich.

Uncle Mo pronounced the vodka a particularly good one for a public bar, and knocked the drink back as if it was water.  He ordered another. 'One must make hay while the sun shines, Isis,' he said as he paid the bar lady. 'Grab one's opportunities.  Seize the time!' He seized the glass and sampled that vodka, too.  It turned out to be equally worthy of note.

I ate my sandwich quickly, but paced my sips of the orange juice so that I finished it a couple of minutes before our train was due.  Uncle Mo managed to cram in another vodka and soda before we heard the train arrive and had to quit the bar quickly to run for the train.  He purchased my ticket on board.  It was a single, I noticed.  I mentioned this.

He looked discomfited. 'Your brother gave the money,' he said. 'He will send additional funds for a ticket back later, along with some money for your keep.'

I nodded, saying nothing.

There proved to be a trolley service on the train from Stirling to Edinburgh.  Uncle Mo found this out by asking another passenger.  For a while he sat fretting and turning to look back up the aisle every few moments, then he announced he was going in search of the toilet.  He reappeared a few minutes later with four miniatures of gin, a larger bottle of tonic and a small can of orange. 'I bumped into the buffet trolley,' he explained, setting his supplies down on the table and passing the orange juice to me. 'No vodka.  Tsk.'

'Hmm,' I said.

I was already starting to reconsider my plans.

At Waverley, having dispatched the four gins with the swift contempt they apparently deserved for not being vodkas, Uncle Mo still did not seem particularly drunk, though he was slurring his words slightly on occasion, and his turn of phrase - tricky and ill-cambered at the best of times - seemed to be tightening.

There was a half-hour to spare; it seemed only natural to repair to the bar.  Uncle Mo appeared to have hit a plateau by that time and managed to cruise through the thirty minutes on nothing more than a brace of vodkas (obviously not counting the twelve that went into his hip flask straight from the optic on the discovery that there was no off-licence in the station).

We left the bar, I picked up a timetable for the east-coast line from the information centre, and then we boarded the train which was due to take us to York.  My original plan had involved getting on the train with Uncle Mo and then saying I was going to the toilet or the buffet car just before the train was due to depart.  I deliberately stowed my kit-bag on the luggage shelf at the end of the carriage, near the door, and claimed the seat that faced in that direction from Uncle Mo after he sat in it originally, claiming that I got sick if I didn't have my back to the engine.  All this meant that I could leave my seat, collect my bag and get off the train just before it left, and not even risk being seen as the departing train went past me.

However, I had been thinking.

Despite the obvious importance of everything else I had had to take on board over the last twelve hours - Cousin Morag's allegations and revelations, the promise that at long last I might catch up with her, Allan's sacrilegious use of a piece of high-technical electronic equipment within the Community, his lies to Morag, his lies to me, his lies to the whole Community and the sheer selfish greed for power that these symptoms hinted at, not to mention my Grandfather's profane, misguided weakness and his attempt to seduce me - I could not stop thinking about that note on the address list in the desk, the note alongside my Great-aunt Zhobelia's name. 'Care of Unc.  Mo'.

I remembered Yolanda's words.  Something, for sure.

It spoke of the corrupting atmosphere engendered by the deception that had been revealed to me that what had once seemed innocent, or at any rate of no great consequence, I now found deeply suspicious.  Great-aunt Zhobelia's decision to seek but her original family and her effective disappearance as far as the Community was concerned had always seemed odd before, but certainly well within the normal parameters of human contrariness; people are constantly doing things we find incomprehensible for what they regard as good and obvious reasons, and I had never really wondered about Zhobelia's decision any more than I had about Brigit or Rhea becoming apostate, accepting that people just did do strange, even stupid things sometimes.

But now, in the infecting climate of mistrust and apprehension brought about by my discovery of Allan's mendacity and the realisation that behind the curtain of familial and religious trust and love was hidden the machinery of perfidious malevolence, much that I had previously taken blithely on trust now set me thinking what sinister purpose might be concealed therein.

Great-aunt Zhobelia.  Care of Uncle Mo.  I wondered…

I felt a moment of dizziness, just as I had the night before, perched on the storeroom window.  The moment passed, as it had just the night before when I had teetered on the fulcrum of that window at the back of the mansion house, leaving me in a moment of giddy clarity.

I made my decision; my mouth felt dry and there was a metallic taste in it.  Heart thumping; again.  This was becoming habitual.

What the heck.  I would stay on the damn train.  The timetable said I could get off at Newcastle upon Tyne and catch a train back to Waverley in time to get to the swimming pool for my rendezvous with Cousin Morag.  If everything ran to time, that was.  I'd risk it.

The train started off.  An announcement informed us the buffet car was open for the sale of light refreshments, soft drinks and alcoholic beverages.

'I think that means the bar's open, Uncle Mo,' I said brightly. 'Would you like me to go and get us something?'

'What a good idea, niece!' Uncle Mo said, and took out his wallet.