Calls heralding the ship’s arrival shrilled from the cobbled harbourside, voices travelling up and along the ginnels beyond. The sweating, uneasy horse was led off, legs quivering at the unfamiliar steadiness of terra firma, as Viola and her mother were ushered into the stripped-wood interior of a Customs House, where more forms were to be completed. Deborah Kendrick shook away her traveller’s daze to tick and sign under the officious gaze of a weaselly-looking man with epaulettes on his shoulders. The lengthier documents appertained to Dot, who was eyed cautiously, as if she were a dangerous breed, not a moustached Schnauzer of miniature size.

Viola sat on a wooden bench, Dot at her feet, their possessions spread about her in boxes and suitcases, sensing the effort of the journey alight suddenly, heavily, on her shoulders. She fought to keep her eyes open in the back seat of the battered Land Rover, no matter how bright the sun that day, how jerky the drive, so that she might take in the sight of a gathering of children standing on top of what looked like a set of wooden stocks, clambering over one another to get a better view of the newcomers as they drove past and away.

Steep fields opened out in an undiscovered shade of green, punctuated with cows and goats and sheep, a scene so idyllic it seemed set-dressed for their arrival. As they approached the farmstead, the unmade track gained in potholes and gradient. The weaselly man from the Customs House was their silent driver, playing brutally with the bite of the throttle, navigating the climb.

In the front passenger seat was their official welcomer, a Mr Jacob Crane, head of the Council, headmaster of the school, a large man with an imposing nose and a hard shell of a belly. He raised his voice above the crunching of gears to deliver his evangelism of the island, bellowing it over his shoulder to Viola and her mother, confirming all that they had been told before they came: Everything on Lark is good. Everything. You need only look around you and see. These affirmations somehow worked against the beauty playing out around them, not letting it speak for itself. Then came the old Reunyon Farmstead to disprove his theory after all.

Sitting on the blustery western elevation, it resembled a ranch house lifted from the Wild West proper and dropped on the island from a great height. It was in need of love and repair, something Deborah Kendrick said she understood very well when applying for tenancy of the vacant property. It wasn’t a lie. She reiterated her suitability for the task as they pulled up, explaining how she wasn’t afraid of hard work, that she had been a landscape gardener before having children. Viola watched her mother dip her chin after the casual usage of the plural – children. Mr Crane did not seem to notice.