Viola has these phrases rehearsed and ready, should she be stuck for something to say.

They had gone inside – Saul first, Viola behind, resisting the urge to push the walkie-talkie into the small of his back like a weapon. The bald wooden floor of the Customs House had echoed their arrival, magnifying their footfalls and the rustling of their coats. Viola had started to follow Saul into the back office, like always, but he’d stopped her, put up the palm of his hand – ‘No, you wait here’ – before gesturing to the bench below a browning pastel map of the island. This had thrown her off-guard. She’d given him a look that asked, Really? He’d nodded, waiting for her to move away and sit. That was when he’d taken one of the blue blankets from the wire basket by the door, provisions for occasional overboard fishermen, and arranged it across her shoulders, paternally, almost. She was dealing with official Saul, Saul-at-work.

He’d raised the hinged front desk, the section bearing a taped-on laminated timetable for this year’s mainland ships, closing it behind him, and then disappeared into the office beyond.

On the opposite wall to the bench there is a series of framed black-and-white images of the estate – the Big House in some long-gone heyday, the seat of the reclusive Earl. Viola has heard so much about this invisible sovereign, this silent ruler of the island (or rather she has heard the same small slices of information on repeat), that the man has morphed, in her mind, into the fickle, fairy-tale giant who bit a chunk out of Lark and pushed it out to sea. At his whim, might the Earl push the island right back again – if he were ever to show his face?

Viola looks down. The toe of her boot skims the coastline of an old stain on the otherwise pristine blond-wood floor, a stain that wasn’t there last time she rested on this bench, limp and ocean-tired, the day she arrived on Lark. It would be easy for her to think that she is different now, that these ten months on the island have transformed her – once bewildered and full of sorrow, she is now upright, focused, and in possession of the ball – but it would be a lie.

The two-way radio is growing sweaty in her grip. Her back is slowly slumping. Dot has given up all hope of breakfast and fallen sleep.

Viola isn’t in charge. She called one shot and then landed herself on the wrong side of the counter, away from the action.

Get up, instructs a voice inside. Go into that back office!

But here comes another voice, slicker, more practised, telling her that she hasn’t been blindly obedient to Saul, rather she’s chosen to put her faith in his clear authority. She must not fall into the trap of assuming that every man is up to no good.