Yet still I hung back. I watched Barbara Stanney giggle with him at the kitchenette, transformed into a young woman again in the flow of his jokes and patter. She would bump her hip against his impishly, put a hand to his back – ‘Oh, stop it, Mr Hailey, what are you like!’ Even Ruth French dropped her defences early, delivering cutting assessments of Ben’s shirts and ties, snorting at the way he’d styled his hair. From her, this was acceptance, even affection. Each of my female colleagues was gifted their own individual way to be comfortable in his presence; I remained empty-handed.

One lunchtime in the staff room, he shared his desire to move on from his boarding situation with the widow Esther Deezer. The others cooed their dismay at Esther’s treatment of him – the meagre meals, the strict curfews. (‘Have you told her you’re not one of those fellas from the telephone company?’) I, meanwhile, affected a lack of interest. I slipped off my heels, hooked my feet beneath me on one of the low, soft chairs, as if I was at home, as if I was alone. I chewed on an apple and looked down into a book.

I kept an ear out for what was going on, of course. It was Faith Moran who proposed the Billet House on the edge of estate land where the harbour master, Abe Powell, lived with Saul Cooper, our Customs Officer, and Reuben Springer, a boatman and occasional barman for his brother Jed who ran the Anchor. The young Cater brothers lived there too, Mark and Andy, both farm labourers, along with Luke Signal, a wiry lad always in an oversized wax jacket, recently apprenticed under my father, the gamekeeper. This was much to the annoyance of Mary Ahearn, Jade-Marie’s mother, a rugged woman, capable, strong. She had been my father’s deputy for the last fourteen years and had long thought the senior post would go to her as my father prepared to hang up his boots. Then along came Luke, a male heir, and we all knew how that was likely to work itself out.

It was a bad idea for Ben to go and live in the Billet House, though it was hard to express why. The lodgings were basic, a little harsh, suited to a certain kind of man. They were built in 2002 not long after the Great Drowning, when ten new workers were hired from the mainland to replace the lost and needed to be housed all at once. It had been a necessary move – the recruitment, the swift construction – but was considered clumsy, as if the Council believed the only problem to solve in the wake of the accident was one of economics, of hands on deck. A couple of those drafted-in men married into the community, but most of them left.