When the small tour has finished, the woman tut-tuts at Hannah’s jacket and boots, and outfits her in proper rain gear. When she is ready, Hannah laughs.

They go to the window and the woman points the way to a hunkered mound in the distance. “Come back along the cliffs,” she says, “that’s the best way. You might see the seals then.”

The track is muddy and rutted with puddles; Hannah walks through them, not around them. When was the last time she wore rain boots? A scrap of song comes to her and she sings out loud. A dog bounds out of one of the farm buildings, weaving through the fence ahead of her, trotting back to make sure she is keeping up, then running ahead again, chasing the swallows, who skirl and dive, loving the wind. Primroses stud the path and she bends and picks them, and then is unsure what to do with the picked flowers, stowing them in the pocket of her coat.

The chamber looks like nothing so much as a heap of rocks, almost indistinguishable from the shelved rocks around it. The entrance is covered with a sliding door. She feels a tremor of fear, but moves the sliding door away and gets down on her hands and knees, crawling along the tunnel before emerging into a small, chambered space. It is not dark—small skylights have been built into the ceiling—nor is it cold, or eerie, even; it is simply rock and earth and a deep insulated quiet. Outside, back through the tunnel, she can see the wind in the grass, the white spray on the sea.

She sits there for a moment, uncertain what to do. There is a scrabbling in the tunnel and a dog appears, coming close to her, panting. She holds him to her, feels his heart, the warmth of his flank. “Hey,” she says. “Hey there.”

Ahead of her, leading off from the chamber in which she sits, is a smaller, darker space. From here it is impossible to see just how far it extends. A flashlight lies on the ground and she reaches for it and switches it on, flashing it into the chamber, which is revealed to be small, but big enough for a person to lie within.

She turns off the flashlight, crawls under the stone lintel and lies on her belly, her cheek on the cold ground. It is strangely comforting—lying like this, she can feel her heart beating in her belly, her chest, the rush of her blood. The distant thump of the sea on rocks. The soft sound of the dog, breathing close by.

She thinks of the bones that were piled in here for so long, thousands upon thousands of them.

Soon enough her flesh will be no more.