The undertaker had been dealt with, a few reporters fended off, Lewis — in London — reassured that there was nothing he could do up here for now, and told not to cancel his gig dates, and James, on a school trip in Austria, finally contacted. He would arrive the day of the funeral; one of his teachers would come back with him.

Dad's study proved to be a wilderness of papers, disorganised files, chaotic filing cabinets, and an impressive-looking computer that neither mum nor I knew how to operate. The afternoon I got back mum and I had stood looking at the machine, knowing there might be stuff in it we'd need to look at, but unable to work out what to do with the damn thing after switching it on; the relevant manual had disappeared, mum had never touched a keyboard in her life and my computer expertise was confined to having a sound tactical sense of which alien to zap first and a leechlike grip on continuous-fire buttons.

"I know just the person," I said, and rang the Watts" house.

Twenty-four hours before the funeral, Aunt Tone had rung and said could we possibly come and see Uncle Hamish? He'd asked to see us.

And so here we were. Mum sat on the far side of the bed, her eyes bright.

I cleared my throat. "How are you, Uncle Hamish?" I asked.

He looked at my mother, as if he thought she'd talked, not me. He shrugged. "Sorry to drag you out here," he said. His voice was flat, emotionless. "I just wanted to say how, how sorry I am, and I want you all to forgive me, even though I didn't… didn't encourage him. He insisted. I told him not to do it." He sighed and tried to press one of the cardboard pieces into place on the puzzle without success. "We were both a little the worse for wear and," he said. "I did try. I tried to stop him, tried to talk to him, but… but… " He stopped talking, tutted in apparent exasperation and took up the little scissors. He trimmed a couple of finger-nail sized bits of cardboard off the piece and forced it into place. "Don't make the damn things right any more," he muttered.

I began to wonder at the wisdom of leaving Uncle H with a pair of scissors, even small ones.

He looked at me. "Headstrong," he said brightly, then looked down at the puzzle. "Always was. Good; liked him; brother after all, but… there was no sense of God in him, was there?" Hamish looked at mum, then me. "No sense of something greater than him, was there, Mary?" he said, turning back to mum. "Proof all round us; goodness and power, but he wouldn't believe. I tried to tell him; saw the minister yesterday; told him he hadn't tried hard enough. He said he couldn't force people to go to church. I said, why not? Did in the old days. Why not?" Uncle Hamish took up another piece of grey cardboard, turned it this way and that. "Good enough then, good enough now; that's what I told him. For their own good." He grunted, looked displeased. "Idiot told me not to blame myself," he said, staring grimly at the puzzle-piece, as though trying to pare bits off it with just the sharpness of his stare. "I said I don't, I blame God. Or Kenneth for… for goading… inciting Him." Uncle Hamish started to cry, his bottom lip quivering like a child's.

"There, Hamish," mum said, reaching out and stroking one of his hands.

"What exactly happened, Uncle Hamish?" I asked. Sounded to me like the man had cracked completely, but I still wanted to see if he could come up with more details.

"Sorry," sniffed Hamish, wiping his eyes then blowing his nose into the black hanky. He put the hanky in his breast pocket, clasped his hands on the edge of the tray holding the jigsaw, and lowered his head a little, seeming to address the centre of the puzzle. His thumbs started to circle each other, going round and round.

"We had a few drinks; we'd met in the town. I'd been at the Steam Packet, meeting with some people. Showed them round the factory in the morning. Just paperweights. Man from Harrods. Nice lunch. Thought I'd look for a present for Antonia's birthday, bumped into Kenneth coming out of the stationer's. Went for a pint; bit like the old days, really."

"Here we are," Aunt Antonia announced from the door, appearing with a tray full of crockery. There was a pause while tea was poured, biscuits dispensed. "Shall I stay here, dear?" Aunt Tone asked Hamish.

I thought she looked worse than mum did. Her face was drawn, there were dark shadows under her eyes; even her brown, bunned hair looked greyer than I remembered.

Her husband ignored her, talking on as before, though now having apparently shifted his attention to the cup of tea Aunt Tone had placed in front of him on the puzzle tray. His thumbs were still circling each other.

"Went to the Argyll Lounge; good view of the harbour from there. Drank pints. It was like when we were younger. Had a cigar. Good chat, really. Rang the office, said I was playing truant. He rang Lochgair. We were going to go for a Chinese meal, just for old time's sake, but we never got round to it. Thought it would be fun to go on a bit of a pub-crawl, so we went on to the Gallery bar, in the Steam Packet. That was where we started talking about faith."

Uncle Hamish stopped talking, took up his cup of tea, sipped quickly from it without raising his gaze from the tray, then replaced the cup in the saucer. "He called me a crack-pot," Hamish said. His eyebrows rose up his forehead; his voice rose too. Then it fell again as he said, "I called him a fool."

Hamish looked quickly, furtively, at my mother. "Sorry," he mumbled, and looked forward at the tray and the puzzle again. He sighed; his thumbs kept going round. "I told him Christ loved him and he just laughed," Hamish complained. "He refused to see; he refused to understand. I told him he was like a blind man, like somebody who would not open their eyes; all he had to do was accept Christ into his life and suddenly everything would fall into place. The world would look a different place; a whole new plane of existence would open up. I explained that all we did here was merely a preparation for the next life, where we would be judged, punished and rewarded." Hamish shook his head, face radiating dismay. "He went all snide, asked me when exactly I'd had the brain by-pass operation."

(God — or whatever — help me; at that point, despite it all, I had to stifle a guffaw. I coughed, and dabbed at my suddenly brimming eyes with a tissue.)

Hamish rattled on. "I told him that only religion gave any meaning to life; only God, as an absolute, gave us a… peg to hang our philosophies on. What was the meaning of life, otherwise? He said, What meaning? He said, How long is a piece of string? and, What colour is the wind?" Uncle Hamish shook his head again. "I told him faith was love, the most beautiful thing in the world. He said it was nonsense, surrendering our humanity. Humanity!" Hamish scoffed. "Religion gives us rules; it can keep people from doing wrong; it helps us be good. But he wasn't having it, would not listen. 'Religion is politics, he told me, several times. As though repeating it made it true. 'Religion is politics! Religion is politics! Blasphemed. We left the last bar — can't even remember which one it was, to be honest — and we were walking back here, for a nightcap, I think, coming along Shore Road — I left the car in the Steam Packet Hotel car park, of course — and we had some argument about the Shore Street Church. He said he liked it, liked the architecture, but it was really a testament to the skill of humans, not to the glory of God, and just a symbol. I said it was the house of God, and he'd better not trespass." Hamish looked up at mum for a moment. "He was walking along the wall, you see."

Mum nodded. Hamish was already staring at the tray again.

"He said what was any church or temple but a giant, hollow idol? I told him he was sick; he said he was infected with reason. I said Reason was his God, and it was false; it was the true idol." Hamish sighed. "The street was wet; there had been rain. I remember noticing that… Kenneth shouted at me, told me… " Hamish shook his head."… he said; 'Hamish; all the gods are false. Faith itself is idolatry.»