Our caretaker spent his mornings by the water once he had opened up the school, boat maintenance and net mending being his second skills.

But Ben was all of a sudden there, in my classroom, throwing down a heavy cloth bag, clattering tin buckets beneath the ceiling’s streams.

‘It’s alright, Michael,’ he said. ‘No need for Huxley. You get dry in my classroom. Mrs Leven can find you a towel. I’ve got this.’

The boy left and Ben dragged a ladder in from the corridor, grinning, as thrilled by this crisis as the children were.

‘I’ll go and assist Mrs Leven,’ I said, feeling surplus to requirements and doubting Dellie’s ability to handle all sixteen of our students at once.

‘No,’ said Ben, ‘I’ll need you.’ He gave me an even bigger grin, a disarming one. ‘I’ll need someone to pass me tools.’

My eyes went to the heavy cloth bag he’d thrown down at safe distance from the pooling water. His initials and surname were etched onto the fabric in marker pen. B. E. Hailey.

Elijah? I wondered. Ezekiel?

He set up the ladder near the source of the first torrent.

‘You brought tools?’ I said.

Miriam’s story about the single rucksack – I had believed it. He’d left everything behind, I’d decided, physical and metaphorical. But the tool bag couldn’t be the single bag, else how did he get all those shirts and ties here, and the tacky product he was putting in his hair, and the something he wore on his skin that smelt of coconut?

‘Yeah. I brought tools. That’s okay, isn’t it?’

‘Of course!’ I said. ‘Of course! Sorry!’

There it was – a glimpse of the old Miss Cedars. Sugary, apologetic.

He crouched at my feet and opened the bag. The buckets, half full, chimed tunelessly, the first streams settling to heavy drips. Ben stood up, a torch in hand, and caught me staring, solemnly reappraising him.

‘What?’ he asked with a cautious smile.

I shook my head. ‘Nothing. Sorry. Hadn’t we better crack on?’

He climbed the ladder, and I passed him a large screwdriver, then a knife, as he prised out the dampened tiles above us. While he worked, he explained that he had brought a large crate of equipment from the mainland too, along with his tools. Saul Cooper had hoodwinked Miriam Calder with that just-one-bag story no doubt, knowing she would spread word fast and wide, bedding in suspicion about our newcomer right from the start.