Before long, Lucija’s colleagues in the convent held a meeting amongst themselves and decided that it might do them all good if, in the short term, Sister Lucija managed the refuge set-up as well as convent-to-world communications, via trips by ferry into Ayrness. In the case of the convent, there were insuperable physical restraints, involving several fathoms of deep salty water, to the free-flow of internet connectivity.

‘You ought to go and meet Eva Levi,’ said Sister Geraldine. But Lucija didn’t want to meet her. Supposing she wasn’t as great as her book? Supposing she no longer cared about Bosnia?

She did want to travel off Papa Astrid, however. The moment she stepped from the convent’s motorboat on to the island of Astrid and waited, with her rucksack on her back, for the ferry to Ayrness, she felt relief rushing through her. She waited there alongside the farmer with his truckload of sheep, and the man who fixed the wind turbines, and the young family who’d been visiting their grandparents, and the slim, blonde, businesslike woman who tapped away on her phone throughout the ensuing half-hour journey, and she breathed cold air into her lungs. She looked out at the islands lying one beyond the other. Sometimes, at the convent, when she walked out with her pail to the chickens, these very islands looked too much like diminishing hopes; but today they were beautiful, tranquil, soothing. They promised adventure.

Lucija really liked the other sisters but it was hard work sometimes, living together, day in, day out. She wasn’t used to it yet. She wasn’t even used to God, let alone Jesus. The idea of talking to them in prayers for the rest of her life sometimes made her weep. Oh Mary, mother of God, pray for us. Saints Cwen, Brigid, Astrid, anciently of the islands, pray for us.

For the first few months of her time in the islands, therefore, while sitting at an internet café in Ayrness Harbour, the sun streaming through the window and warming her cheek, Lucija dispensed with convent business as quickly as she could, and typed messages to her schoolfriends. One was in New Zealand, another in Canada. Her cousin Tanja was in Melbourne. Omer was at home in Sarajevo.

LUCIJA: I looked at videos on YouTube. I learnt the songs I didn’t know, and sang them to Omer. I sang them to myself when I was walking around town. But it wasn’t practical, having to go to Ayrness to type an email. So Sister Brigid sent me off to the smartphone shop in Berwick. I was on the 6.20 return boat, singing away, the phone in my bag, when I heard someone singing ‘Kad ja pođoh na Bembašu’, the love song with its Sephardic melody. I jumped to my feet.

Eyes full of tears: a woman, with silver snakes for hair, holding a briefcase. As the woman sang about the Bembasa lovers, Lucija began to speak to her, rapidly, in their language. But the old woman shook her head.