We passed the smokehouse, breathing in the salty, ashy taint that it left on the air, heading onto the cobbles, well lit ahead of us. On nights when the Counting House was to be occupied, they switched on the line of lanterns, strung across building fronts and from poles around the harbour mouth. Tonight, those lights winked at us, they waved.

‘I really am sorry about your dad,’ Viola said, a rush of words, as if it was important to state this before we stepped into the ring.

I’d heard the phrase so many times in the past few weeks – I’m so very sorry for your loss – and still had no idea how to answer. Thank you. Are you? I know. Yes, me too. All responses seemed cursory, pointless; the ‘sorry’ in the first place did me no good.

‘Where’s your dad?’ I asked her.

‘Dead too,’ she replied, and I almost laughed when ‘sorry’ made its way to my tongue like a reflex.

I blocked it, asked instead: ‘And you don’t have any brothers or sisters?’

She sniffed, licked her lips and looked out beyond the boats that nestled against one another within the harbour walls.

‘No,’ she said. ‘You?’

I followed her gaze, onwards, to the straight black line between water and sky.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Same.’

We were being watched. The figure of Saul Cooper was picked out by lantern light against the front wall of the Customs House as we neared our destination. He was smoking, though he had given up years ago and become notorious for his sermonising.

‘They’ll be using the insides of your lungs to resurface the path to chapel,’ he’d yell to the boatmen who kept up the habit, saying it in good humour, but meaning it, and the boatmen would mutter to one another about how there were none so holy as the recently converted. Saul’s abstinence had led to his excessive consumption of fishermen’s mints, a sweet always sliding across the front of his teeth. The hot, peppery flavour of them had passed from his tongue to mine on All Hallows’ Eve. An intrusive thought came – what would it taste like to kiss him now, his mouth sullied by tobacco? I chased that thought away.

Viola stalled at the sight of Saul, peeling his back from the building, stubbing out his cigarette with a toe.

‘Keep walking,’ I instructed, and Viola did, making for the stocks where she would tie up her dog. She stooped low to fasten a double knot, petting and calming the animal before she was willing to stand again. Then, in an action incongruous with her earlier hesitation, she gave Saul a tentative wave. This was all the invitation he needed. He jogged towards us, the length of his oilskin coat flapping like the wings of a bat.