“You’re a very bad singer,” she whispered to the dog, who minded not in the slightest. “Uh,” she said, as Konstantin still stood there. “Sorry to interrupt. I was just heading down to the village.”

“Oh,” said Konstantin, who had a whole day free and not a clue what to do with it without friends or money. At the spur of the moment he said, “Well, so am I.”

Isla didn’t look pleased, he noticed. For goodness’ sake.

“Or maybe not,” he added pointedly.

“No, no, come with me,” said Isla immediately, feeling miserably aware of having fallen short with her manners. It had just flashed through her mind that if she said he couldn’t come, he’d just end up walking about three paces behind her, given that there was only one road down into town anyway. But what would he think of everyone being so excited to see a few trees? She told herself she didn’t care and carried on.

The island looked so pretty, though, if you were wrapped up, the fresh snow scrunching cheerfully beneath your soles, the clear imprints of paws and birds’ feet that had gone before you, including the lovely squishy shape of the ducks’ footprints, plopping along on duck business.

Conversation was sporadic as they neared the little port, where quite the crowd was forming.

“What’s the crush?” said Konstantin. “Has someone got the island’s first computer? Be careful nobody panics when they see a moving train.”

Isla looked at him crossly, but her expression was hidden underneath her hat and he didn’t notice in the slightest.

“Hello!” shouted a small voice. It was Ash, the younger of Saif’s two sons, who had spent many a day while Saif was handling an emergency more or less being babysat at the café, so he knew Isla well.

It was hard not to have a soft spot for Ash, who still had a limp from a badly set leg in Syria and a desperate, confused desire never to have to go through his bad experiences again. In Ib, his older brother, this manifested in a certain wariness and sullenness. In Ash, an openness to the world that made him friendly as a Labrador. On the tiny island of Mure, this was always happily reciprocated in a way that made Saif alternately happy and then worried all over again for when his darling boy had to face the real world and found out everyone wasn’t quite so friendly.

“Hello, Ash,” said Isla, tousling the boy’s too-long dark hair.

“The trees are coming!”

He turned to Konstantin.

“Trees are big things that grow in the ground,” he began confidently. There were, of course, no trees on Mure; it was simply too windy. “You put them up at Christmastime. They’re for hanging lights on,” he continued.

Isla expected Konstantin to be wearing his usual annoyed frown, but to her surprise he had an interested, engaged look on his face. Ash stretched out his arm as the ferry got closer.