Tuesday evening, I sat at the green baize of Margaritte’s table one last time. She dealt out my cards, focusing for the longest time on the Star – a picture of a naked woman pouring one vessel of water into a pond and another onto the earth, an eight-pointed guiding light above her, a tree of life within reach. Margaritte wanted me to understand how auspicious this card was; it signalled broader horizons, the courage to seize opportunities, wonderful revelations, the chance of finding a true home.

She flipped smoothly into scripture: ‘And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.’

‘And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes,’ I replied, ‘and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.’

We were quiet for a moment.

Then: ‘No one ever comes back,’ she said. I was used to this now, Margaritte knowing things before she’d been told. ‘They all cross over with promises to bring help and are never seen again.’

‘I’m not promising that,’ I told her. ‘I’m not proud. I’m only saving myself and…’

‘Your future children?’ she finished, a rescue from the embarrassment of a confession. I am a witch, and also a whore; my crimes are clearly two-fold.

I looked down at the mirroring of our splayed hands on the table – my fingers white, the nails short and neat, yet to be troubled with any real work; Margaritte’s thin but heavy-knuckled, the tracks of veins leading to nails that had grown thick and pearly.

She turned over one hand to reveal the angriness of a new India-ink tattoo on her wrist.

‘You?’ I said. ‘It was you?’

She nodded.

‘They’ve needed my counsel these last few months.’

She unbuttoned the top of her blouse, pulling it and her silky slip aside to reveal older symbols across her upper chest, some faded to almost nothing.

‘The fishermen have them too, hidden under their shirts, for protection at sea,’ she said. ‘But you need them on the land too, I find.’

Thursday, I packed.

Margaritte had found me a suitcase, a rare object on the island. When I asked where it had come from, this hard, cream clamshell with its paisley lining and mildewed pockets, she had shrugged as if she could not remember, told me that the universe had heard my need and delivered.

I had very little and would take only essentials. My mother was going to move into the cottage soon, whether it was Luke who claimed the lodge or someone else. I didn’t want the place to feel empty, stripped of all life.