As Tara drove out along the coast road, Stella talked non-stop: about school, and a trip she was making to London in the spring, and the university she wanted to go to. They turned right, down a bumpy single-track road. It was a cloudy night, the darkness textured and grainy. But behind them came a pinprick of light. When Zoe turned to look, she saw a line of cars, the beam of their headlights, revealing and then reclothing the shoreline as they passed. She watched the waves, silent in the moonlight—

They turned a corner, and there was the curved outline of Cwen.

Somebody had lit a fire on the island. The jagged towering flames loomed up through the night.

‘The boats have arrived,’ Stella said. ‘Here are our masks. I got you a peacock feather one, Zoe. Ravi, this is for you.’ She handed him a plain black mask and, when he put it on, Zoe laughed. ‘With your kaftan you look like Batman as a hippy.’

Zoe pulled the feathered mask over her face, feeling it tickle her arms as she bent her head to get out of the car. ‘You look like the Queen of Sheba,’ he said.

She wrapped herself in Stella’s big coat and allowed Tara to take her hand as they made their way down to the beach, where a woman was standing on the shore, holding up a flare. Some women were already sitting in the boat, their hands on the oars. Another boat, also lit by a flare, was returning across the water. Zoe had made this journey so often with Eva, she didn’t feel scared; but it felt strange and solemn to be rowing through Eva’s last journey, in silence, in darkness, into the fire, the oars rising from the water and plunging in again, the waves hitting the bow.

They walked along the beach to join the circle of figures moving slowly around the fire. Zoe remembered the last time she was here with Eva, and the loss lashed out at her. She noticed that the turf had been cut away neatly for the fire pit. With one hand in Ravi’s, and the other in Tara’s, she joined the people processing around the fire, circling silently, one cheek warm from the flames, the other chilled by the cold. There were probably fifty in the circle; Stella later claimed a hundred. Not being able to see the faces, Zoe found herself focusing on the bodies; were they all women, apart from Ravi? She felt a frisson of excitement, and laughter. It was impossible to tell.

A call went up. We have come here to honour you tonight, women of the islands! We have joined you to celebrate our newest figurehead, Eva Levi, and to ask protection for her work, as it encounters its gravest threat.

‘It’s for her, isn’t it,’ Ravi whispered. ‘To keep her with us.’