MARIAM: Not until then. It was exactly after that time with Nina and Lucija, dancing, that I came to realise: the baby had left and given me a chance.

The nun appeared before them, as if transported there by her own anxiety; Nina hadn’t heard her approaching.

‘Tea!’ said Mariam.

‘I made it specially for you,’ the nun said, handing a cup to Mariam; who handed it on to Nina, who drank it down, in a gulp; she was thirsty.

‘Oh,’ said the nun.

Steam rose into the winter air. Nina only half-noticed the tea’s sweet musty taste of earth and leaves. It was cold already. The clouds were racing across the sky in the bay, patterning the sea with their shadows as if an invisible hand was lazily trailing its fingers through the water; God, probably, filling people’s wombs, and emptying them. Nina noticed her happy feelings rising into the air like steam. Her happy thoughts were mingling with the clouds. They were the clouds. Now Mariam was pointing at the sky. She began to sing, in a foreign language, and Nina, and also Lucija, listened and understood exactly what she was saying. Mariam was pointing out that they had each other, that they were lucky, that the world was a beautiful place, that Fatima and Ayesha and all the wives of the Prophet—

‘Cwen,’ said Lucija, ‘Brigid.’

‘Madonna,’ said Nina.

—would look after them as they had looked after each other. As the clouds began swirling above them in an amazing multicoloured dance, and the starlings performed an extra pirouette in the sky, diving and rising and diving, the women took each other’s hands, and got to their feet, and began to move across the lawn. It was so sensual. Normally Nina hated dancing. But today she was being led by Mariam, who was queen of them all – her movements so languid, she was golden treacle dripping upwards.

In the sky the starlings were turning, falling, climbing.

They heard a car but did not falter in their dance. The car was coming towards them down the drive. Still holding hands, they watched, entranced; trapped in the golden, translucent suspense of late afternoon, as the vehicle moved nearer and nearer. The car stopped. A man got out.

They had forgotten him completely—

—the minister, the son, Sebastian Vane.

The woman arrives on Cwen’s island, alone. At a glance, Cwen can see that it will be the last time.

The woman is old now. She spends the afternoon by the spring. She sits by the spring, staring out to sea, barely moving, even when the flock of black sheep approach boldly and regard her from a distance. Cwen, too, watches the woman, as the hours pass. She has seen this sadness and resignation before, in others. It is not what Cwen wants. She doesn’t want sadness; she wants transformation.