I didn’t want to hear it – his pessimism, his excuses – I had urgent business.

‘The reason you’re not doing anything,’ I told him, my parting shot, ‘is because you’re a coward. Your stepping back makes you nothing short of a collaborator.’

I strode away, towards the Counting House, feeling Viola vacillate behind me, before deciding to follow, matching me in step. Ahead of us, in the yellow light of the windows, two silhouetted tableaux were playing out. In the meeting room on the left, four men were taking their seats, ready to mete out justice for the consequences of a punctured heart. In the scullery on the right, a trio of women clustered, chatting and gesticulating, fussing around a tea urn.

We entered the lobby with its tired marble floor, a floor that had always made me wonder what Lark had been like when the stone was first laid, shiny and new, a hundred or more years ago.

‘Turn left,’ I told the girl, feeling her instinctively edge towards the right. ‘Turn left.’

In the meeting room, in front of the raised stage with its red velvet curtains and carved and painted Union Jack above its proscenium arch, were two foldaway tables, pushed together on the parquet floor and spread with a white tablecloth. Jacob Crane sat at the head of this table, jacket slung across the back of his chair, his top buttons loosened. To his left, was Abe Powell, our lanky harbour master, in his battered and ubiquitous Fair Isle jumper, and at his side Jed Springer from the Anchor, still in his bartender’s waistcoat. On Mr Crane’s right, Dr Bishy wore his customary navy three-piece suit, unbuttoned to allow for the distension of his belly. There were five seats empty – one for Saul, one for the Reverend, one for Robert Signal, one for our Earl, one for my father.

Jacob Crane raised his hand as Viola and I entered, a sign that we were to stop where we were. The gesture was one I recognised and had been trained to obey. Should I be called to his office at school and cross the threshold a moment too early, he would hold me in place in the doorway while he finished reading the last few lines of a document. It occurred to me only then that there never were any last lines that needed reading; the hand was a tactic, a way to exert his authority from the very start.

Viola and I halted in the doorway as Jacob Crane ran through the apologies, his voice perfunctory, ticking things off on a lined notepad as he spoke.

‘Brothers who send their absences this evening – Earl Catherbridge, Father Daniel, Robert Signal, Saul Cooper.’

‘No, I’m here.’