The Uninvited

from Taiwan. In the car park of Glasgowairport I blinked in the sunshine. After thepressurised heat of downtown Taipei, theair shuddered with freshness. While myplane was touching down, the little girlwas preparing her weapon. By the timeI’d cleared customs, she’d executed theattack. And as I drove towards the coastand the ferry, skirting the sprawling edgesof grey Scottish towns, two police officerswere contemplating a crime scene whichthey later described as ‘the mostdistressing and perverted’ of their careers.I lived, at the time, on the island of Arran,in a landscape that flitted unpredictablybetween light and dark: shafts of sunlight,charcoal clouds, sudden rainbows, thepale featherings of fog on scrub, the