LUCIJA: I cried then. We both did. She hugged me.

(It was the first time Lucija had been hugged in years.)

LUCIJA: Sarajevo is not so big a city, but still, I was far from home and finally to meet the one person in the islands who knew Sarajevo well – who had known Mevludin! When it happened, it was great for me. I felt the world of home reaching out in a caress. I have been away from it for too too long.

JUDGE: How long had you been in the islands by then?

LUCIJA: Six months. But sixteen years away from Sarajevo.

The island the nuns had bought was small, one mile by two, and until they arrived there, only Sister Geraldine, who had been managing the nearby Archipelago Women’s Club for a year by then, had seen it. The others had made do with the fourteen photos on the estate agent’s website. As it turned out, yes, it was bleak; but it was lovely. Really, everything they had hoped for. There was a farmhouse and outbuildings and fields for the chickens and cows that Sister Brigid intended to buy. Money had been set aside at Sister Geraldine’s request for a greenhouse, though Sister Brigid quipped that keeping some for the litigation they might face would be useful. They had broken with Rome, and with Britain. The ancient Celtic Christians had had independent monasteries on islands; the fact that it was mostly men who lived there, so everybody said, meant nothing in this day and age. The Norsemen and women had known island independence too. Papay was the Norse name for those small islands; ‘holy men’. Sister Brigid said papay meant ‘paps’ – breasts. Little breasts in the sea. Large ones, sometimes. Holy women, in other words. Sacred mammary glands afloat in the salt.

JUDGE: You were Eva’s accountant for some years?

SIGRID [HENDERSON]: Correct.

JUDGE: Are you at liberty to elucidate on this matter of Eva’s financial relationship with the convent?

SIGRID: The Convent of All Our Holy Mothers was a cause to which Eva regularly gave money, in a personal capacity. She contributed to the convent’s start-up costs. She enlisted Sister Geraldine in the running of the Archipelago Women’s Club, which was largely how the convent was financed. Eva was long of the opinion that the island of Papa Astrid, that is, the convent itself, would be the ideal location for the women’s refuge. She wanted it to be there for a number of reasons. The nuns had brought in new staff at AWC; the running of the club was going so well. She thought they would do an even better job with the refuge. There was a farmhouse building which would be perfect as a place for women who had suffered during war, or from domestic abuse, to get away from things, to receive treatment, before rehabilitating back into mainstream life. Or, even better, helping them to realise that, actually, maybe mainstream life is part of the problem. There are other ways. She gave [consults notes] over £3,000, most recently, for that. Mariam Maher was the first woman but since then there have been many others.