Barbara was so pleased with the support that the notion of a Book of Recipes from the Islands received that she got to work on it right away. She experimented with dishes such as battered scallops, from Dounsay, and bobbit, a spicy Tarn teabread, which soon began to make regular appearances on the café menu. A notice was posted in Archipelago Now, and put up in the museum foyer, calling for recipe submissions. Zoe was employed as typist and copy-editor, and although she didn’t believe everything she was sent – was Inga Stenbridge’s recipe for ‘Poor Woman’s Pot’ authentic, or had she made it up? – such was the good feeling generated in the museum (Barbara, on the front page of Archipelago Now, grinning as she held up a spatula) that Felicity Davidson dropped by one morning. She ordered an Eastray kale and potato scone, declared it delicious (it was not), and made an important announcement: she had managed to free up a Café-Redec Budget (she called it that) to coincide with the book’s launch in January. Barbara Anderson took the itemised budget, studied it carefully, and ticked those items she approved of, which included: Professional espresso machine with grinder - - - - - - £8,000. She also approved the large-format printing of the island photographer Elise Vallor’s 1960s photographs of locations mentioned in the book, which were to be hung on the repainted walls in place of the chicks. The bakery at Lerston was to supply the café with pastries and cakes, including an exclusive Tarn bobbit.

JUDGE: Do you recognise the description painted during this inquiry of the changes at the museum?

FELICITY: It’s completely spurious and defamatory to suggest that my management of the museum had any gender-motivation whatsoever. What happened in the café is a prime example. No man got fired. The woman who was running the place stayed in her job. All we did was redecorate. I don’t understand what all the fuss is about. Eva tried to persuade me to go for a Neolithic V as a motif but we decided against it.

JUDGE: What about the new displays you put in?
FELICITY: We consulted with a wide spectrum of experts, from the islands and beyond.

JUDGE: Dr Weissbluth, within your own work and teaching – you teach at the University of Oxford – are you saying that you would never promote, advertise or alert students to ideas such as those here in the museum?

IAN: I’m not saying that the display boards are wrong, per se, but the kind of claims they make would not be tenable outside that forum, say, in peer-reviewed academic journals. I would never promote or advertise those ideas, no. I might alert, with caveats.

ZOE: Does the patriarchal view of history come with caveats?

JUDGE: You were part of it from the start.

ZOE: I guess so.

JUDGE: You didn’t mind?