The air inside the Aberlour cooperage is thin and carries the sharp, wintry bite of the nearby Spey. Morag Drummond sets her heavy canvas tool roll onto a workbench scarred by decades of oak and iron. The silence here is a cathedral’s silence, a world away from the rattling trams of Leith and the echoing emptiness of the house Iain left in March. Her fingers, calloused by thirty-five years of hooping barrels, move with a muscle memory that requires no thought.
She unwraps the leather tie, revealing the gleaming steel of her drivers and hammers. This shed is smaller than her own, smelling of fresh pine sawdust and the ghost-scent of old bourbon. It is a temporary sanctuary, a six-week reprieve from the French corporate lawyers circling her life like gulls over a fishing boat. She adjusts her silver hair-pin and pulls on her apron, the familiar weight settling against her chest like armor. Everything is in its place, ready for the first quarter-cask to be stripped.
Then, a sound breaks the morning stillness. Behind her, the crunch of heavy boots on the gravel yard comes to a sudden halt.
