I roll my eyes. I won’t be able to get Bonnie to agree with me. We are both silent, but when she starts talking again my attention drifts to the man who’s just entered the café. A black woollen hat is pulled low over his forehead, and his chin is covered in roughly shaven stubble. When he pulls off the hat I recognise him as the man who’d been talking to Emma yesterday. He glances around the café and starts to walk to the counter when he catches my eye and suddenly stops.

‘Stella?’ Bonnie is shouting in my ear. ‘Are you listening to a word I’m saying?’

‘I’m listening,’ I say. His dark eyes seem to penetrate right through me before he abruptly swivels on his feet and walks straight out the door. ‘Actually, I have to go,’ I tell Bonnie. ‘I’ll call you again later.’ I hang up amid her protests.

‘Meg, who was that man?’

‘What man?’ She looks up but of course he’s no longer in sight.

‘He just came in the café. Messy stubble, grey hair, really dark eyes. He looks so familiar.’ And he clearly knows me, or at least he did when Emma told him who I was.

She wrinkles her nose. ‘Could be Graham?’ she tries flatly. ‘Sounds like Graham Carlton. Lives up in one of the bay houses. Married to—’

‘Susan Carlton,’ I finish. ‘She was my mum’s best friend. Of course,’ I say, a glimmer of recognition coming back to me.

‘Why do you want to know about him?’ she asks, her top lip curling at the last word.

‘No reason,’ I tell her as I watch the window to see if he’s still around. ‘They were leaving that summer,’ I murmur, remembering how upset Mum was when Susan told her they were going. How she’d cried when an estate agent brought people over to view her best friend’s house.

‘Guess they must have changed their minds.’

I’m leaving the café when Freya suddenly appears on the path in front of me, as if she’s sprung out of thin air.

‘Hey.’ She lifts her hand in a wave, her face drawn. She’s lost the sparkle she had yesterday. ‘Where are you heading?’ she asks.

I shrug. ‘I’m not sure. I might just head back to my room for a bit.’ In truth I haven’t a clue what to do and if there were another ferry today there is part of me that could go home. An eerily deserted island where no one is happy to see me isn’t the return I envisioned.

‘I’ll walk with you,’ she says and nods in the direction of my old house. ‘Let’s avoid that, though. I’ve had enough of it for now.’

‘I haven’t been talking to people like you asked,’ I say. ‘I don’t have anything to tell you.’