‘Who’s that then?’

‘That then,’ he replied gruffly, ‘is me.’

Other days, she ventured as far as the cobbles of the harbourside, considering it a search for the island’s potential, the secret it had yet to offer up. She gripped tightly to the doomed hope of discovering a coffee shop, somewhere to sit and have a milkshake, but found only a smokehouse with herring and mackerel turning gold on their racks, a tiny, hardly ever open library in one of the lanes, and a pub that was more of a men’s social club, since it didn’t admit women until the weekends, and under-eighteens, never.

There was the Counting House, with its upstairs computers, the sort of building that would have been populated by lithe women with yoga mats on the mainland, but on Lark was the venue for (according to a poster in the marbled lobby) ‘fascinating and informative’ sessions with Dr Tobiah Bishy, MBBS, MRCGP, including ‘Correct Usage of the Island’s Defibrillator’, ‘Know Your Blood Pressure’ and ‘A Walk-in Skin Clinic (Lancing of Boils, etc.)’.

The island’s only shop, the Provisions Store, had been charming in its strangeness to begin with, but soon fulfilled its destiny to disappoint – nothing but a warehouse piled with stock, smelling of ripe cheese and even riper fish, lorded over by a brace of fierce, middle-aged women. Viola ached for the shiny persuasions of a Tesco Extra.

On one visit an argument broke out in the fresh produce section, providing a brief glimmer of interest. A pretty blonde girl around Viola’s age was standing with her mother behind a pyramid of plums. They were debating urgently in a language that sounded like Swedish, or Danish maybe. Viola feigned interest in a tray of walnuts, so she might edge closer, hear more.

The girl, at the height of her exasperation, switched the quarrel to English. ‘You’re not listening to me!’ she hissed. ‘That’s not what I’m saying, Mum, I’m not saying that at all.’

The woman, her hair cut into the same neat bobbed style as her daughter’s, snatched the girl’s wrist, looking worriedly about them for eavesdroppers. ‘Then why say it?’

The girl drew breath to speak again and the woman, frantic to make her quiet, drove her nails into her daughter’s skin.

‘Ow!’ She wrenched her wrist away, catching the corner of a crate of apples as she did, sending the fruit to the floor, bringing one of the fierce women running from her position behind the counter.

Viola craned to watch the girl flee the scene, her flat, buckled T-bars slip-slapping against the concrete.

‘And you can get rid of that filthy animal, ’n’ all,’ said the attending fierce woman, turning on Viola in the chaos. ‘What on earth do you think you’re doing, bringing that thing in here?’