COLIN: I would say that, yes, the working places of the islands were taken over by women with axes to grind, who failed to acknowledge us because we were men.

After Colin Grieves moved to the council, Inga invited him to a thought-speak meeting with Jen and others – their growing collective of island women. She wanted to give it a go; to give him a chance. All the women had heard, and seen, and read, about the frayed tempers, the brutal or bombastic posts; they knew the position that he, and others in the council, had adopted towards Inga. She had begun to attract negative attention – first, she was pretty, young and blonde; second, she had stopped being diplomatic and started saying what she thought; third, what she said was often critical. Any criticism of island culture and the way things had always been done was taboo. As the island saying went, ‘the nail that sticks out gets hammered’.

The women suggested meeting at the museum café, seeing as it was a space open to all islanders, innocuous and neutral. Colin didn’t see it like that, at all. For a start, there were nine women, and only one of him. He walked into the café, where they were sitting at three tables pushed together along the harbour window.

‘I’m recording this,’ he shouted. ‘I’m photographing it, and I’m posting it on social media.’

The women looked at each other. Some of them smiled – bad idea. Others shrugged. Stella tugged down the back of her mint-green T-shirt to better expose her new tattoo. She reapplied lipstick.

‘This is a completely compromised choice of location,’ Colin said.

‘Where would you like to meet?’ Tara asked politely. She was only seventeen.

‘I’m not here to meet you,’ he said, causing Barbara Anderson to look up in alarm from the till, where she was putting through their very large coffee order, ‘I wanted a record of who you all are. And now I’ve got it.’

The women laughed. They weren’t that scared. Not back then. That was before the inquiry was announced.

COLIN: They put women in the fire service, for example – forced them to join, when actually women aren’t good at this job, not at all. They don’t have the upper-body strength; they don’t understand knots, or how pumps work. And then, after women began signing up, something else was lost, too. A kind of camaraderie. Men working alongside men, in complete confidence? That’s how fires are put out, and wars are fought, and the country is defended. It’s been like that for centuries. Since the beginning, probably. And then the flag – we were all really upset by that.

JUDGE: The flag seems to be everywhere. On cars, on flagpoles, in gardens.