Tealights were lit in strict contradiction of the Closed-months Rationing rules regarding candles. If it was dry enough, they collected scrub and made a small fire, in strict contradiction of Article 5 of Lark Council’s Woodland and Pasture directive. They could not claim ignorance as their defence. The TV and VHS were rolled out of the school cupboard on their trolley at regular intervals to play the safety video. Its message was clear: messing around with fire was no joke. One spark and the whole of Cable’s Wood could go up. One fire with the right wind and the whole island would roar alight. Jade-Marie, more than anyone, should have known better; her mother was in the volunteer fire force.

They dressed in white, pulling old nightdresses from the bottom of their satchels and tugging them on over their uniforms. There were visible mends on the garments, suggesting age, but that hardly narrowed down who had given the girls their ghostly robes. Everyone on the island knew to make good and pass on. The dresses were large, drowning them, and from that detail, perhaps, the culprit might be found. Someone had to be helping, putting ideas in their heads. This wasn’t purely the stuff of instinct, their lying in the grass, star-shaped, hair spilling, black, brown, blonde.

Palms to the sky, they offered themselves, brazenly.

‘Visualise yourself becoming one with the earth,’ a voice intoned. (It was hard to see whose mouth was moving when they were lying down like that. From a distance, all three voices sounded alike.)

‘Let this terrible foulness seep into the soil.’

(They knew that’s what they were – foul.)

‘It’s not ours to carry, we can let it go.’

(Wishful thinking.)

‘And now we sing!’

They sat up.

Another argument.

‘I don’t want to do any of the songs we know.’

‘Why not? We can take them back. We can make them our own.’

Anna began a teasing verse of ‘Lord of the Dance’.

Jade yelped and covered her ears.

Britta lifted her mouth to the sky and began to howl, coiling vowels, the sound startling the others into silence.

‘Ooooooaaaahhhhhhhheeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaahhhhh!’

‘What on earth is that supposed to be?’

‘I’m making it up, aren’t I? Our new kind of singing.’

The other two shrugged – why not? – and joined in. They added their own discordant harmonies to this hymn sent upwards to a tracing-paper moon.

On other occasions they kept their silence and knelt, eyes closed, writing on pieces of paper resting on their laps. Blinking awake from this trance, the girls read aloud their scribbles, sounding astonished at what was there, believing they’d played no part in the composition.

They joined hands. They made up chants.

Clean we are, pure we be

Our minds fall open and we can see

Take the dark, turn it to light

Wash this away before the night.