Unusually, for an islander, Nina Brock had very little talent for gossip. Gossip washed back and forth across the islands as sure as the tide coming out and in; you could throw a plastic bottle of tittle-tattle overboard while crossing from Ayrness to Dounsay – young Stella Armitage has got herself a feminist tattoo – and be sure that, six days later, it would wash up in Lerston Sound (Stella’s great-aunt, unfortunately informed of this violation by young Zoe Brock, the waitress, while enjoying her monthly outing to the Golden Oldies lunch club at the museum).

Nina had no online life; no smartphone, no Facebook. Of course, she heard things, while rolling out pastry in the production room, or serving customers in the shop, and sometimes those things did concern goings-on at Harcourt House, or the latest thing that Eva was up to in college. But Nina herself had no interest in matching names to faces; was not turned on by the excited pitch of other people’s voices; had no taste for the power accrued by acquiring and disseminating slightly inaccurate, sensational information. And thus when Alice, Eva’s amanuensis, came in that October to buy a dozen Halloween doughnuts, topped with a meringue ghost (‘I’ve heard they’ve won awards,’ she said brightly; adding, anxiety rolling in like fog, ‘the meringue isn’t made with raw eggs, is it?’; and of course it wasn’t, and of course anybody else could’ve told at once that she was pregnant); or Barbara tripled the museum’s order for bobbit (a fact worth immediately sharing with one’s colleagues); or Jen Mackae, who never normally graced the premises (her husband, Alan, did the big weekly supermarket stint with the children), stopped by asking for some sourdough – ‘Eva’s getting into it,’ she said with a roll of her eyes – Nina did nothing with the opportunities. She certainly had no more interest in sourdough than she had any notion of making social capital from random bits of island news. She would twist shut a bag of iced buns, and hand over the change, and turn with a polite nod to the next customer, her face not exactly placid as custard – custard-tart like, it intimated wrinkles of worry – but you could be sure she wasn’t listening to the chat. Who knew what Nina was thinking? Zoe had no idea; nor did Ruth. It’s probably fair to say that nobody else ever stopped to wonder. But Zoe loved her mother.

Cant pick u up today going to dock

OK, Mum. What’s wrong?

Nofing. I watered yr basil it was really wilty

Thanks, what about the tomatoes?

Shore Im busy tonite will do it tomora

I’ll help you.

theyr green

Mum, when did you have your first boyfriend?

! Not tellin

I haven’t had a boyfriend yet.

Yr to yung

I want one. Is it because I haven’t grown up around men?