Sometimes through the binoculars, on a clear day in the summertime, you can see the children wave.

But now, in the pitch black of an early winter’s morning, it looks like a tiny pinprick of comfort in a world gone dark, as they chug past, the huge ships making light work of the slapping waves, the motion so familiar as to make walking on land a difficult adjustment for the men.

The island is so small that, at twenty knots, it doesn’t take long for it to disappear behind you, for Apostil or Danilo or Jesus to go back to checking the radar and the fax machine, and to move on to North Uist, to the vast rich fjords of Norway, leaving the quiet island marooned once more under the cold stars, where, in the MacKenzie farmhouse, at the very southernmost tip of the island, the early-morning fire is going and the coffee is heating on the stove, and Flora MacKenzie is currently in the middle of having a furious stand-up argument with her younger brother, Fintan.

“ COLTON’S BAR,” SHE repeated. “Absolutely not. I mean, I understand it, but also we sound like a saloon where girls wear hot pants and fringing and cowboy boots and ask ‘How y’all doing’ and we have a mechanical bull.”

“Nobody said anything about a mechanical bull,” grumbled Fintan, breathing in the scent of the coffee and the fresh rolls warming in the oven. Then he looked up. “Hmm,” he said. “Mechanical bull.”

“Do I have to take that coffee off you?”

Fintan rolled his eyes. “Anything but that.”

“Look,” said Flora practically. It had only been a year since Fintan’s husband, Colton, had died of cancer. Fintan had good days and bad days. This was not shaping up to be a good day. There weren’t many good days.

Colton had left him the Rock: the hotel he had always dreamed of opening on the island, and it was finally coming to fruition. But there were a million and one little details and he wasn’t enjoying that side of things in the slightest. The hotel had been useful: it had kept Fintan phenomenally busy and helped keep the grief at bay—sheer exhaustion was his friend when it came to sleeping alone in a very big bed. Plus, they had bookings for Christmas Day. They had to open, and quickly.

Flora technically had nothing to do with it.

But somehow, as she already had catering experience running the Summer Seaside Kitchen down on the shore, she couldn’t stop poking her nose in. Also she was meant to be on maternity leave, which, as far as Fintan (and not just Fintan) was concerned, was leaving her with far too much time on her hands to interfere.

“I think Rogers’s Bar is fine,” said Flora. “Just not so on the nose, you know?”

Fintan pouted.

There was a commotion at the entrance to the kitchen. Fintan was staying at the farmhouse, as was their brother Innes and his family. Innes’s daughter, Agot, five, was marching into the kitchen in her nightie, a serious look on her face, a thin wail rising behind her from the corridor.