‘You killed my Neil,’ mutters Mary, as much a discovery to herself as a means to bring down this monster. ‘You killed him… you scuppered their boat!’

Jacob Crane shakes his head firmly. The wives and the hangers-on of the Council take their cue to caw objections, but the gathered have stepped back, a hung jury, uneasy in their wavering.

The proceedings judder, they stall.

‘And it shall be, when he shall be guilty in one of these things, that he shall confess that he hath sinned in that thing.’ Benjamin Hailey speaks up – the outsider. He reads the scripture from his laptop, his face illuminated. ‘And he shall bring his trespass offering unto the Lord for his sin which he hath sinned, a female from the flock, a lamb or a kid of the goats, for a sin offering; and the priest shall make an atonement for him concerning his sin.’

No one responds, not even Jacob Crane.

Leah Cedars turns and appraises the man beside her as if he were a stranger once more – a stranger all along. He has never been a religious man.

The Eldest Girls lift their heads and wait.

The coycrock teacher looks about him, to the anxious spectators, gauging his reception. He goes back to the screen, brings up fresh words. The apple of his throat rises and falls. He begins.

‘“On September the first, 2017”,’ he reads, ‘“on the first day of term, Mr Crane called me to his office early, before school started, so that he might speak with me alone.”’

Viola feels the bodies of the Eldest Girls react, suddenly alert. She searches their expressions.

‘The dossier,’ whispers Jade-Marie.

They hold their breath as one.

Benjamin Hailey continues: ‘“Picking up his bible, Mr Crane said that, now I had turned sixteen, I had been chosen to lead the other girls by example and learn the errors committed by Eve so that I did not copy them and multiply the sorrows of everyone living on Lark. We were to act this out, he said, in his office there and then, so the understanding would be in me and I would never forget.”’

The headmaster lunges forward, swiping bear-like at the teacher’s laptop, but Benjamin Hailey turns away in time, saving the screen.

‘“I was told to kneel”,’ Mr Hailey continues, ‘“and Mr Crane explained how Eve had been beguiled by the serpent and then he unzipped the fly of his trousers and took out his – ”’

‘No!’

The swipe is successful this time, the laptop clatters to the wooden floor – but at the hand of Diana Crane.

‘I will not have it,’ the woman cries, her husband frozen at her side. She is charged with rage, it crackles from every inch of her.

Mr Hailey dives to the floor, the laptop still breathing, and the gallery cluster around him to see the screen, to shield him from further interruption.