‘That would suit you, wouldn’t it?’ Iona said, but it was spoken with resignation rather than malice.

‘Why do you think your sister is here, Iona?’ She needed to understand what the girl knew.

Iona hugged her knees to her chest. ‘I always remembered I’d once had a baby sister, but my mum used to tell me I was wrong. She said I was making it up. I knew I wasn’t, though. I remembered her being in the room. I remembered her cry. Her smell. You don’t make things like that up, do you?’

Maria gave a small shake of her head.

‘She was there one day and not the next. I never gave up on the idea of her, finding out what happened. Part of me thought my mum might have done something to her.’ She shuddered. ‘Then three years ago I decided to look for her. I told Mum and she completely flipped. She got really angry and wasn’t making any sense, but she was so out of it, she suddenly blurted the truth.’ Iona gave a short laugh. ‘She admitted she’d sold her baby. How sick is that? I couldn’t look at her after that. There was no way I could speak to her again, and thank God she realised that and had enough intelligence to leave me alone.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I saw this TV programme about adoption. I’d started seeing a guy who worked at the hospital and he was a useless idiot but he helped me look up all sorts of records. There was one care worker who used to visit us all the time and I recognised her name when we found it. My mum used to mutter, “Oh look, Joyful is here”’ – Maria flinched at her mother’s name – ‘but I always looked forward to her coming because she was kind. She brought me treats.

‘Then I found her obituary in the paper,’ Iona went on. ‘It said she’d had a daughter.’ She turned and looked at Maria. ‘I kind of thought that lead had come to a dead end but I looked up your name anyway and found a picture of you in a newspaper. You were protesting about some developments on the island.’

Maria remembered the article. Stella had proudly stuck the clipping in her scrapbook.

‘Your name was in the headline clear as day, and right next to it was another one I recognised. At first I couldn’t work out why I’d heard of Annie Webb, but then I remembered seeing her in the records as a midwife. Maybe I shouldn’t have read anything into you and Annie both living on this remote island together, but it seemed strange. I wanted to come and see it for myself. So I came over for a day trip. And then another. And I watched you and your precious family and—’ Iona suddenly stopped.