“I thought you’d heard me,” said Inge-Britt, as they both knelt down in front of the stunned Konstantin. Inge-Britt shot Lorna a look.

“Are you all right?” said Isla softly, sitting down on his other side.

Konstantin blinked at her. “This is cold and wet,” he said. “Even more than everything is here already.”

Ash was looking at the man astounded, as Saif rushed forward to pick him up. Lorna couldn’t look him in the eye in case she found him blaming her for nearly whacking Ash on the head with a Christmas tree.

“Ash, I told you to stay out of the way,” he said gently into the boy’s ear, but making sure he didn’t raise his voice or sound cross. How Lorna loved his voice.

“Do you want to get up?” said Isla to Konstantin. “Or are you quite comfortable?”

“It’s all relative,” said Konstantin, as Saif rushed over to him to make sure he was all right, which, apart from some gravel in his hands and some tears to his surprisingly expensive raincoat, he was.

“Thank you,” muttered Saif gravely. “Thank you for saving my boy.”

Konstantin looked up at the tree, as if surprised at himself. “You’re welcome. I didn’t even realize I’d done it until I had.”

“Well, you are brave,” said Saif, cleaning off Konstantin’s hand with an antiseptic wipe.

“Ouch, that stings,” said Konstantin. “So now I think that I am not.”

“Is this a cut filled with superglue?”

“Can we talk about that later?”

“Here,” said Flora. “Have some free hot chocolate for being heroic.”

“Can I have some free hot chocolate?” said Ash.

“You were antiheroic!” protested Flora. “You got in the way of the trees!”

“Oh,” said Ash, crestfallen.

“Of course you can,” said Flora, feeling guilty.

“ I’M SORRY,” SAID Lorna, as Saif carried her two trees up the hill, with Ash helping from the back. He didn’t say anything. It was very difficult when the boys were with them.

“You didn’t do anything,” he said in his usual calm way, but his mind was far away. There was a reason he had been avoiding Lorna—deliberately avoiding her. For months. He knew it was cruel and unfair, but he didn’t know how to tell her, because he didn’t know what to tell her.

After querying the letter, he had received word through a back channel in the Home Office that there was some chatter and to stand by, and he could think of little else. His wife had now been missing for nearly three years. It was impossible to focus on the situation with his wife and Lorna, as well as a highly demanding job as the island’s only doctor and being a single father to his two sons. And all the time having to stand by. He couldn’t give heart space to Lorna, because he knew if he did, she would consume him utterly, and he couldn’t—he couldn’t let that happen. He could barely even look at her.