It felt dangerous, this way of speaking, the kind of behaviour that risked the full bell, book and candle – or a suspension at the very least. For that is what had happened to the now-not-so-lovely Miss Cedars.

‘It’s not a suspension!’ spat Susannah Cedars at the Provisions Store when she overheard Eleanor Springer filling in everyone on her daughter’s absence from school. ‘It is extended compassionate leave because the girl’s father has just died!’

Susannah Cedars, whose short hair was looking distinctly wild after missing the last two monthly hair salons, dropped her full basket of produce to the floor with a crash, bringing the store to a hush. She took in their stares, understanding that this was her own personal excommunication.

‘You vultures!’ she muttered as she walked away, abandoning her basket, smashed eggs and all. ‘You enjoy your taste of flesh!’

This outburst only served to strengthen the Council’s judgement: Leah Cedars was afflicted with a serious illness of the mind. As is the mother, so is her daughter. Turning up at the Counting House half-crazed, believing she had a right to speak as a member of the Council, appointing herself a conduit of God’s word, dragging with her a bewildered hostage in the shape of the red-haired coycrock girl… it was all very, very sad. The woman was no longer up to her job.

On the Monday evening, after the announcement that Miss Cedars’ class would be led by Mrs Leven until a suitable replacement could be found, the disgraced teacher had been seen thumping on Miriam Calder’s front door, almost wrenching the dolphin door knocker from its plate. The daughter’s hair was as wild as the mother’s, and she was dressed in a strange combination of an oversized man’s shirt and too-short trousers.

‘I was there!’ she was heard ranting at Miriam on her doorstep. ‘Why would you believe him and not me? I have it all recorded!’

She demanded that her version of the meeting’s minutes be published in the next Lark Chronicle.

‘Mr Crane supplies me with the minutes,’ Miriam replied firmly, as Miss Cedars pulled from her pocket a smooth rectangular something that she started flicking and tapping and cursing at, before thrusting it towards Miriam’s ear. (‘I truly thought she would strike me across the face with it,’ Miriam told everyone, after the fact.)

This exchange was brought to an end by Frank Calder, coming to the door with his walrus moustache and his wooden crutch for the wonky hip that kept him from working and going to chapel and any other number of commitments on the island, though it did not prevent him from frequenting the Anchor. He nodded for his wife to step aside and, letting his crutch fall against the porch wall, he took Miss Cedars by the arm and wrestled her away, back down the cobbled slope towards the harbour.