She followed him through the side door into a wide room with windows on all sides. The view took in the entire spread of the sea, as if the building were the bridge of a ship. Various pieces of radio and radar equipment buzzed and blipped, and added to this was the thunder of a small electric kettle.

The man went out to the waiting area beyond another door, where Viola knew, from her first moments on the island, there was a counter with tide times and a shipping schedule, a white, flaking wall and an uncomfortable bench. She hadn’t needed to give him her name, it was right there, written in his ledger the day they arrived. He was the one who had driven them to the farmstead, and delivered Mr Crane to their door when the headmaster had tried to enrol her in the school. He knew who she was. Yet, there was the sense that all those tasks had been carried out by the Customs Officer in his official capacity, and this encounter was something different, so he was different too.

‘I’m Saul Cooper,’ he told her, returning with a blue, fusty blanket, holding it out and examining it on both sides before draping it over her shoulders. ‘I should have said.’

He pulled up a chair by an electric radiator and guided her to sit.

Saul Cooper. More dots joined up for Viola – the Customs Officer and the male subject of Michael’s spying mission were the same person. Somehow in Viola’s mind the two had become disconnected. She looked about her with a keener eye, took in the orderliness of Saul’s desk: documents stacked in wire trays. In the corner of the room, there was a low camp bed made up with white sheets and a rough, grey blanket, and beside it, a stand with a sketchbook and pencil. At the sink, shaving equipment and a toothbrush.

‘You live here?’ she said, unable to hide the pity in her voice. This man had seemed impressive that first day on the island, indomitable, with his barked questions and superior silences. Now, he was reduced – nothing but a grown man playing house, building himself a den.

He turned and regarded the bed, seeing perhaps how she saw it.

‘I only sleep here when things get busy,’ he told her. He set his eyes on the mugs, dropping in teabags and pouring on water.

Viola looked out the window, to the yawning, churning sea that surrounded them, wondering when ‘busy’ ever came to be.

‘So, you were thinking of following Bethany Reid, were you, cherub?’ he said gently, handing her a mug, the term of affection blindsiding Viola. Poppet was what her mother used to call her, before, when she spoke easier; her dad had called her Vee-vee.

‘Thinking of showing fate a thing or two, were you?’ Saul went on.