The day the sale went through, Eva rang the house, as usual, and nobody answered. She found herself unable to reach either Lucija or Mariam on their mobiles. She rang and rang, and nobody picked up. She rang Jen; but Jen was out of signal. She tried Marcin, her cleaner, but he was in Berwick. So finally she rang Inga. ‘Eva,’ Inga said, when she answered. ‘I’ve been wanting to talk to you – your son George. He’s been getting a little bit . . . over-eager with some of my officials on the council. A holiday housing scheme? On Cwen?’ ‘Inga, please,’ Eva said, ‘I can’t get through to Lucija and Mariam. Can you go up to my house and find out what’s going on?’ ‘Sure,’ said Inga. ‘We’ll talk about the other thing later.’

An hour later, at four o’clock, Inga rang back to say that the house was locked, and in darkness.

So Eva caught a flight up to the islands.

As she arrived in Ayrness, she got a text from her son Henry, asking again about the Burne-Jones.

Then another, saying that he was driving up that afternoon, and would meet her at the house.

Then a third: he was on the last boat.

But he was coming too late. She had already transferred the money.

The boat was halfway across to the island before Cwen realised what she had to do. She had become more powerful in death. In life, she was only a healer. In death, she became a saint.

Of course, life was the precious thing. Life was blood and love. Life was tears. Death was none of these things, and life was what mattered. But death had qualities, too, the first of which was that it was everlasting. And moreover, sometimes, through death, new ideas were born and new lives spawned. Sometimes, of a person’s two eras, it was death that took over.

She saw the figures on the headland first. She recognised the man: one of those brothers.

The wind was coming from the north-east, and after that it was obvious. It was the end, and the beginning. It was the agony, and the transformation. It was the hearth-fire and the Queen widow; it was Bride and Mary.

But it took a huge effort to lift her arms, and drag the waves, and drag them again, and again, and again. There was a pounding in her head and the rain felt like hail on her face. Her hair was wet and her dress was soaked. She ripped it from her and stood there by her cairn, her face tipped up to the sky. Wind roared around her island, as Cwen called the woman to her.

Britain derives its earliest name, Albion, by which it was known to Pliny, from Albina ... who seems originally to have been the Danaan Barley-goddess ... ‘Demeter or her double, Persephone’ . . . the White Lady of Death and Inspiration . . . who gave her name to Britain.