‘No!’ The boy looked shocked. ‘Oh, no!’ He crossed himself. ‘Not Him! Not Him!’

‘Then who?’

‘I don’t want to say it aloud,’ he replied. ‘I’m a good Christian and that’s pagan nonsense.’

‘But you said –’

He interjected, diverting her with another soliloquy. This time: about how he was going to be an archaeologist when he was older, discover more about Lark’s ancient cultures. He scooped up a fir cone and methodically stripped it of its scales. There was no precedent for this kind of career on the island, he told her, but that was no obstacle; the lack only indicated a demand. Once the island got a telephone mast and everyone had wi-fi (Did Viola know what wi-fi was? Had she heard of it?), he would be able to study an online course very easily.

Then he flipped the subject again, onto his older brother, Luke, who had just moved out of the family home and into the Billet House. He had begun an apprenticeship to the gamekeeper, which the boy explained was a ‘really very powerful role on the island’.

Viola thought of the stooped, white-bearded man who had yelled at her for bothering his dogs. He had been grumpy certainly, but powerful … ?

‘His daughter’s been given one of the cottages on the harbourside all to herself!’ the boy exclaimed. ‘And she doesn’t even have a husband!’

A rare pause opened up into which Viola thought she should offer some information of her own, a juicy detail of life on the mainland, quid pro quo, but he steamrollered her again with talk of fishermen and a tragedy at sea that had killed a load of them, way back when.

For someone ‘dying’ to catch a glimpse of the new redhead, he had no interest whatsoever in anything that redhead might have to say.

‘And you’ll have to take your dog back to your house, now,’ he said, as if this was a logical continuation of the story. ‘He’ll get in the way of the spying.’

‘She,’ corrected Viola. The woods were thinning now. There was the close-by sound of the sea. ‘And who are you to be telling me what to do?’

‘Oh, I’m Michael,’ he said, apparently immune to her resentment. He thrust forward his hand for her to shake, a gesture too late and too grown-up. It was oddly endearing. The boy meant well, Viola guessed. His rudeness, his social hopelessness, could only be born of interacting with the same handful of people every day. She shook that hand.

‘I’m named for Michael who leads the armies against Satan,’ he told her.

Viola grinned. ‘Oh, yeah, which play is that in?’

‘Oh, it’s not in a play,’ he said.

‘I know.’

‘Then why did you –’

‘Spying!’ she threw in, employing the boy’s own tactics on himself. ‘You said spying. Who are we spying on?’