By the time the inquiry was announced, threatening everything, Inga had been convening regular women’s meetings on Cwen for at least a year. After the judge opened proceedings, Inga put out an open call to all women of the archipelago. Together, the assembled women came up with a strategy for community healing. They decided that whatever the conclusions of the inquiry, on the day that judgement was handed down, the schools and college would empty of women, the female-run businesses and leaders whom Eva had supported would put down their tools, and all would meet to give each other succour. In the hour before the judge began summing up, the women would set out from Harcourt House, to march on Ayrness. Island women. The nuns from Papa Astrid. Tara, Inga, Jen. Stella with her fiddle. The women would walk across the public footpath, over the field, and along the coast road, as the sun rose higher over the sea. Zoe, with her Eva-hair, would march in front. The women would smile and laugh, singing one of the ancient epics Eva loved. There would be energetic squalls of rain but the sun would come out through the clouds, filling the air, and the fields, and the sea, with its gold. When they arrived on the outskirts of Ayrness, armed with nothing but their chant, other women would join them, and island men, too. Waiting for them in town would be women’s groups from all over Britain and beyond – Lerwick, Lyon, Lima. As the numbers swelled, they would march on the library, on the inquiry, to show those people, the television crews, the judge, the men, the force they were. Zoe would take the microphone from Inga and speak directly to the crowds of everything her grandmother had taught her, of the sacred women-shaped spaces that ancient people built – the regenerative principles they were steeped in. She would ask them if they could imagine a world like this. And the crowd would roar its approval.

That was Inga’s plan.

Of course, everybody knows how hard it is to countenance the idea of women-only gatherings, women-only groups. The mere sight of women assembling en masse makes certain people, women as well as men, feel uneasy. Queasy. Everyone’s felt this way, at some point. There’s something deeply disgusting about female gatherings. Women just shouldn’t express solidarity with each other.