In their lower moments, the girls would go so far as to ask themselves if they deserved it – if, in some way, what was happening to them was punishment for a sin. Viola would never stand for this line of talk.

‘So, in that case, it’s my fault that my dad and brother were killed?’

‘Maybe,’ said Anna dispassionately.

‘No!’ exclaimed Jade-Marie. ‘No one is saying that!’ She clutched Viola to her, mothering her with a stroke of the head.

‘Then, what sin is it,’ Viola asked, ‘the one you think you’re being punished for?’

Britta immediately had the answer. ‘The sin of being a girl.’

From there, Viola suggested the harmonies. It was something active, positive, loud. It would demonstrate their holiness to the island and, more importantly from the girls’ point of view, God would hear them.

Viola had an ear for music. In the school and church choirs, she’d sung solos, boarding minibuses to perform at events across the country, returning with a hoarse voice, mostly from hollering along to the Now compilations on the journey back. She missed it.

When the mothers seized upon the girls’ singing display, thrusting them to the front of chapel, to show how good, how heavenly, their daughters were in the aftermath of Peter Cedars’ death, Viola had to ask, ‘So, your mums, they know?’

This brought about desperate exclamations of no and you must never say anything and I couldn’t bear it if my mum thought of me like that and they think this is just about spells.

Not a soul on the island knew what was going on except them, they said. Viola countered this, forced them to concede that some people might; that they could be too scared or too toadying to do anything but look away. This was when Miss Cedars’ name would bob to the surface – the main villain. Oh, she definitely knows, they’d stress, it’s not like we haven’t tried to tell her enough times. They mocked her with unkind impressions, especially of the way she clung to Mr Hailey. She’s brainwashing him, they’d say, making him believe it’s all okay.

Viola couldn’t help but think that telling the truth would be the simplest way to end it all. We wouldn’t be believed, was their response, even with our mums onside, it would be buried all over again, we would be punished even more. Viola tried to imagine herself in the same situation – her mother would be the very last person she’d go to, and after her, who was left?