—a young man, barely nineteen, is humping the barmaid under the climbing frame. Nina, barely sixteen, is still at school. Her skirt is pushed up around her hips, her tights and pants pulled off (she has kept on her new Wonderbra, too good to be true). Sebastian Harcourt-Vane, from the big house. How she will boast at breaktime on Monday morning.

Sebastian Harcourt-Vane. The scent of over-the-water privilege and opportunity rises from him as surely as archipelagic limitations and Impulse rise from her.

Sebastian was in the islands for Christmas after his first term at Cambridge. Eva complained that she had never seen him so pumped up with his own importance: sleek, buoyant, irrepressible. (That’s why they called those round bobbing plastic things out in the harbour, buoys. They were insufferable. That’s what she wrote in her notebook.)

Eva also wrote about Nina, the girl. Her exact words were: A typical island teenager with a blonde perm and no ambition. Harsh.

It is true that almost everyone thought Nina was dopey. It was what her friends said; what the whole Harcourt-Vane family said about her; they’d written something only a little politer on her school reports. Ruth, Nina’s mother, didn’t mind. Nina had always been quiet but she had a good heart. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t wordy; she liked to save them up. Occasionally she’d say something illuminating. Ruth felt grateful on these occasions; illumined.

As for the pregnancy, it was easy from the start. Nina’s periods began when she was eleven. For five years she had endured the upwelling of melancholy each month; all that blood only made her quieter. So it was a relief to think of something permanent growing in there. She listened intently to the midwife; imagined those little fingernails pushing themselves outwards, and the little beating heart; stared for ages at the alien scan shot they printed off for her. The baby was so tranquil. It was lying on its back. It had a lovely nose. It was peaceful. It made Nina feel peaceful too.