I suspect Ben deleted their words and I too should put a match to this book or throw it into the murk of the Thames. What stops me is that the bible lacks a chapter from Leah’s point of view, a woman’s point of view. Ruth’s book, Esther’s – they’re not enough. After looking away for far too long, it is hard now to accept that it is the right thing to do.

The island will be reborn under the guidance of admirable women, like Mary Ahearn, Margaritte Carruthers, Hannah Pass, my mother. They have the responsibility of taking the events of that night, the consequences of them, and shaping them into a story everyone can live with – and live by. The truth of a situation is always whittled away by history; a person’s virtues and good intentions, the great change they brought about, can be neatly separated from their killing of an innocent young boy. I see a distant future where Viola and the Eldest Girls are considered saints.

For me though, Friday the 13th April is when I remember St Michael, a boy who led an army against Satan, unwittingly.

I must believe that the island will come to good, that it will evolve into a place where sympathetic magic is allowed to flourish, where a man will not pay court to the powerful to keep his daughter, his livelihood or his secrets safe, where the word of the Lord is wielded only in the name of love not rule. Only then will those who ran away consider coming back.

As the April ship set off on its return leg, as I stood at the bow to watch Lark be lost to the horizon, I saw the doctor and the headmaster released from the stocks and led along the dogleg jetty to its very limit beneath the shining cross. I stayed to watch the millstones be tied about their necks, and then I stepped down, beneath deck.

I looked away.

Acknowledgements

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thank you to the wise and witchy women who shared their knowledge, especially Lissa Berry, and to the warm and welcoming churches who let me loiter on the back pew.

This book began as a conversation on Twitter between an editor and a writer who didn’t really know each other – thank you, Alison Hennessey, for replying, and for your endless rigour ever since. ‘Rigour’, to be clear, being one of my favourite words.

Thank you to Louise Lamont, as always, but in this case, for the dead body.

Early work on this book was supported by a grant from The Authors’ Foundation via the Society of Authors to which I would urge other writers with works-in-progress to apply.

Verse 4 of ‘I Danced in the Morning (Lord of the Dance)’ by Sydney Carter (1915–2004), ©1963 Stainer & Bell Ltd, 23 Gruneisen Road, London N3 1DZ, England, www.stainer.co.uk, is used by permission. All rights reserved.