It was outside the back door, its throat torn, probably by a badly set snare. The second carcass, the following day, had a shotgun wound to the stomach at close range, as if it had been dead already and fired at for good measure, for amusement. This made me wonder if our conversation with Mary had been overheard somehow, if her words about Luke’s laziness with the foxes had got back to him.

I also wondered – the mood on the island being what it was – if Mary had staged the whole exchange as some kind of bait for us, if she was in league with the boy.

There was no third fox. The next day, there was Viola. She stood on our doorstep, as red of pelt as those earlier offerings, but very much alive.

‘Mr Hailey wants to see you at the stones,’ she said, delivering the message flatly, as if forced to, her hands thrust into the pockets of a long padded coat several sizes too large. Her dog was sniffing frantically at the ground, the fox scent likely still potent to its sensitive nose.

‘When?’ I asked.

‘Tonight,’ she replied, ‘after school. Sunset.’

Then she was gone.

I could pretend that I mistrusted the motives of the girl, that I took my time deciding if it was judicious to meet a man like Ben in a place as remote as the stones. I could pretend that the lure had not worked instantly, troublingly, rendering me useless for the rest of the day, counting the hours until the sun began its descent, but I was done with pretence; of course I would go.

He was standing at the very edge of the high north cliff when I arrived, craning for a better view of the dramatics of the sea. The winds were calm enough that day to allow it; any other time he’d have been swiftly buffeted to his death.

‘There’s a terrible fury going on down there, regardless of whether I walk into the middle of those stones,’ he said with a smile, in place of a greeting. He pulled down the hood of his heavy blue parka and leant in for a kiss.

I leant away.

‘Who told you that,’ I said, my voice dry, official, ‘about the fury? The Eldest Girls?’

He considered me with amused confusion; my tone, my rejection of his kiss, they were merely a riddle to be solved.

‘Those girls are…’ he searched our surroundings for the right words ‘… full of stories!’

I knew that line, he wasn’t the first to deliver it: girls make things up; they tell fibs, are prone to embellishments and fantasies; they don’t know their own minds.

‘I threw your phone down the well,’ I told him.

‘Shit!’ he said. He looked genuinely distressed, as if it truly had been gold or the body of a forsaken wife. ‘What, by accident, or –’

‘On purpose,’ I said.

‘But… why would you –’