Part 2: Kenneth, originally transmitted BBC2, 11/11/1996

Glasgow, Christmas. Student Prentice struggles with an essay while his flatmates watch television. Verity, the cousin Prentice secretly worships, arrives unexpectedly offering a lift to Gallanach. Prentice is disappointed to find his brother Lewis in the car. While enduring Verity's slightly hair-raising driving, Prentice reads his missing Uncle Rory's papers...

The past. Rory and his brother Kenneth, Prentice's father, dine with their sister Fiona and her husband, Fergus. Fergus and Kenneth spar over politics, but Kenneth is surprised when Rory accepts Fergus's invitation to go shooting. The distant past. Children Kenneth, Fergus, Rory and Lachlan Watt play in Fergus's castle. While Lachlan and Fergus bicker, young Rory wanders off, playing with matches. Fergus stays behind, and Kenneth and Lachlan finally find Rory, trapped in a burning barn. After rescuing Rory, Kenneth makes Lachlan swear never to tell.

Staying with his eccentrically religious Uncle Hamish, Prentice has a 'visit' from Rory, who urges him to patch things up with his father. Prentice reluctantly visits his parents, but inevitably ends up arguing with his father. He remembers his father's magical stories when he was little.

At the New Year's eve party, Prentice sees Verity entwined with his brother. He wakes next day, hungover, in his late Gran's car, where his father finds him and relates last night's performance, when Prentice announced to all Lewis and Verity's activities and his own adoration of his cousin. Kenneth shows Prentice his collection of match books, sent to him every few weeks by, he believes, Rory. They argue again about belief.

On the train to Glasgow, Prentice reads from Rory's papers about Rory and Fergus's shooting expedition. That night, in a bothy, after attempting to shoot rats, a drunk and stoned Fergus broke down, desperate to confide a terrible secret. Before Prentice can learn more, his stop is announced and he runs from the train, without his scarf and the papers. To compound his misery, he discovers his flatmate Gav shacked up with his Auntie Janice, and learns he is to be thrown off his course.

Depressed and facing a shoplifting charge, Prentice is visited by long-suffering friend Ash, who meets him at a city bar. She has tracked down reporter Rupert Paxton-Marr, who Prentice suspects is sending the matches to convince Kenneth that Rory is alive. But the journalist flees on seeing Prentice. Ash walks the dejected Prentice home, where bad news is waiting.