Alice didn’t notice the nuns on the boat. But they saw her, because, as Sister Lucija has testified, hovering over her head as she slept – Alice slept the whole way, curled into a reclining seat – was the Virgin Mary. Our Lady buzzed and crackled, flickering in and out of focus, as if she was being transmitted over a dialup modem. One minute she was dark-skinned, in a billowing turquoise sari – ‘Our Lady of the Sea,’ said Sister Geraldine, who was born in Goa – the next she was white plaster, head bowed, flowing white robes, toe to brow. ‘The Catholic burqa,’ said Sister Lucija. As the archipelago came into view in the distance, the transmission stopped entirely. When it returned, twenty seconds later, all the nuns gasped. ‘Who is that?’ asked Sister Brigid, from County Wexford; she had not been keen on joining the archipelago mission in the beginning. ‘The Goddess Kali,’ said Sister Geraldine, ‘Hindu.’ Sister Lucija asked, ‘And . . . all that red, around her mouth?’ There was a pause. Then Sister Geraldine said, ‘Oh, that’ll be nothing but a bit of blood.’

They watched Alice warily for the rest of the journey. When, after the passing of a further half hour, the boat arrived at Lerston, the archipelago’s second-largest town (small and maritime and generally eighteenth century), she was still fast asleep. One of them shook her gently by the shoulder, and the transmission, which by that time was buzzing promiscuously between goddesses and virgins of all hues, stopped dead. There was a last flicker – Parvati, mother of Ganesh, wife of Lord Shiva. Sister Geraldine sighed with relief. Now the only thing above the woman’s head was a poster screwed to the wall in a plastic frame, advertising the museum café in Lerston. Sister Geraldine felt in the pocket of her heavy green habit and pulled out a cough-sweet, which she unwound from its paper and put in her mouth. Also, one of their new green business cards, which she dropped into the open patch pocket of the woman’s coat.

The woman they had woken sat up and gazed around her. She picked her bag off the seat, and felt in it for her car keys. She had meant to have a tea on the boat; her travels had tired her out, which was bad, because the moment she got back home, her sleep deprivation would be redoubled by her daughter. She always intended to top up her sleep supplies when away from home. This rarely happened. Hostel curtains, tent coversheets, hotel blinds, B&B ruched creations, they were all too thin. They let the light in. Either a knife in the eye at 5 a.m.; or a gradual saturation: so you woke at six, dead in the water.