‘He’s not here,’ said the one who sounded like the landlord’s brother. ‘It’s only us.’

‘Try the Anchor,’ said the other in a low monotone – this was surely Abe Powell.

‘How can I?’ she replied. ‘It’s a weekday.’

Feet shuffled awkwardly on the boards within.

‘Crane and Bishy are going up to the farmstead,’ came Abe Powell’s voice, tentative. ‘To speak to the girl while the mother sleeps. Does your handsome teacher help them?’

‘No,’ said Leah Cedars quickly, firmly. ‘No.’

‘Then maybe,’ came Jed’s suggestion, ‘he’ll be out looking for the Eldest Girls. He’s always got some business with them.’

‘Thank you, gentlemen,’ were Leah’s prickly last words. ‘I’m sorry to have disturbed you in your business.’

The younger Signal boy caught Leah as she was leaving; or she caught him, depending on where you believe the power lies.

He wanted to know what she was doing there. He called her ‘Miss’.

‘I might ask the same thing of you,’ Leah Cedars replied, squinting at her watch. ‘What are you doing here at this time of night?’

‘I’m looking for my brother?’ the boy said – a question or a suggestion, rather than a clear statement.

Leah nodded; she sighed, told him: ‘I’m not “Miss” to you anymore. I’m no longer your teacher.’ And it was this fact perhaps that allowed her to be selfish, to leave the boy to his skulking, in the darkness, at that late hour.

She did try the Anchor, though she’d said she could not. She was seen, her face distorted by the condensation and the bottle-end glass, squinting in, not finding what she was looking for. She took the path up to St Rita’s too, stepping inside the emptiness of the chapel. She was seen rattling the chains that bound the gates of the school.

On her return to the cobbles, she stood for the longest time in a dim corner by the harbour, one hand on the door of the Customs House, deciding. Within those walls, an officer was carving himself another heart, a smaller one, as if for a child, sitting in front of a window that was no longer sea-filled, but black. This was the trick of the moon on nights like these; it convinced you that the sea was no longer there.

Onto the cobbled stage stepped the coycrock girl. She was attired as she had been every night that week, her lips redder than her hair, wearing a coat that would have made a marvellous lure for the training of hunting dogs, if cut into many pieces.

Perhaps that’s why the boy with the gun was with her; he wanted the coat off her back.