Paw prints with pet names and a quote

The causeway was under two feet of water when I wrote last, so this one goes over on Tuesday's boat, damp in a carrier bag. I'm telling you because you'll want to know the dogs are managing. Kato has claimed the bench outside the shop, Max still lifts pasties from the rack when Iain turns his back, and Lucy has appointed herself guardian of the ferry ramp. Sammy, who was always the soft one, is asleep across my feet as I write.

You remember the old track across the sand to Eilean Beag. Every walk the dogs ran ahead, nosing at the wrack, and by teatime the tide had come in behind them and smoothed every print away. Dad used to say the island had no memory, only weather. I thought that was the saddest thing I'd ever heard until the council poured the new slipway last week. Lucy walked straight across the wet concrete before the men could shout, then Max after her, then Kato, and Sammy last of all, stopping to look back as if he'd forgotten something. The foreman wants the marks chiselled out. I told him to leave them.

So they're there now, four neat paws in a row, pressed into the grey where the road meets the water. When the tide comes up they should go under like everything else. But I've started walking down to the slipway each evening with the dogs, and we stand there until the water reaches the edge of the prints, and then we turn for home.

Come over in the summer. You can walk it with us. Dad was wrong about the island, Morag. It keeps everything, if you're quick enough to look.

Love, Eilidh