But he IS up to no good! screams the first voice. We know this!

Do we? asks the second voice in all reasonableness. Can we really trust your opinion on that?

Viola stays put, desperate to know how the morning’s discovery is being retold, desperate to hear snatches of the mainland coming down the line, even though those sounds of home might derail her, bring on a dreadful, gasping claustrophobia of the kind she experiences sometimes when the fog closes in and she allows herself to think how very far away everything is.

Before Lark, before the terrible incident back on the mainland, Viola used to cocoon herself in the darkness beneath her duvet, pretending that she was in a stricken submarine, miles below the water’s surface, or in a small pocket of air beneath a fallen building. A test. Could she breathe deep and not panic should the very worst thing happen to her? Her method for counting seconds was robust – one- elephant, two-elephant, three-elephant… But she could get no further than twenty before throwing off the duvet and gulping for oxygen. The very fact that Viola is able to draw breath every day on the island feels like a pure miracle.

She sits back against the damp-encrusted wall, fragments of the plaster attaching themselves to the roughness of the blanket, making her think of the peeling balusters of the farmstead veranda. She must plan, formulate her next move. She returns to the language of film. She could mimic the suspects she has seen on screen who grab power by demanding a phone call – to their family, to a lawyer. But she is not a suspect, Viola reminds herself, a little belatedly.

And there is no one she can call.

The farmstead is out. Her mother would likely collapse on the other end of the line, shifting the locus of the tragedy to herself.

The Eldest Girls cannot be contacted. To bring them into this now would result in a fait accompli, confirming suspicions too easily, too quickly. The girls must be kept at arm’s length for as long as possible.

There is only one person left, someone Viola half-expected to be pressing his nose against the window of the Customs House right now.

She could call Michael.

September 2017

SEPTEMBER 2017

Their new start was going so well.

Viola and her mother walked to chapel every Sunday, and sometimes on Saturday too for Evening Mass. The services seemed to gratify her mother, lift her up. They stood in line to receive the host, Deborah Kendrick meeting every wary glance from the congregation with her warmest smile, her intention behind this clear – she would settle for nothing less than complete acceptance, for herself and her daughter.