‘You don’t need to come.’ His foot itches at the clutch. ‘You’ve already seen who it is.’

It strikes her again, that blood-spattered image. The feet. She’s seen the feet. The boots, the legs, the coat – the right coat – but if she had trampled into the ferns to see anything more, she’d have spoiled the scene. And anyway, she didn’t need to. Because she knows who it is. She knows.

‘I know who it is,’ she says meekly, to avoid telling a lie.

‘Well, there you go.’

He goes to slide the window back across, but she thrusts in a fist, a last gasp.

He sighs. ‘You just need to wait here, cherub.’ His voice is coaxing, parental, tired. The cherub soothes Viola. He doesn’t hate her, not really. She removes her hand.

‘I’ve told them you’ll be waiting in the Customs House,’ he says.

‘But…’

Too late; she is behind glass.

‘Told who?’ she yells, banging at the window once more. ‘Told who?!’

No one will be arriving in the short while Saul Cooper is at Cable’s Wood. The ship doesn’t arrive until lunchtime, and Viola has seen the way the islanders cluster on the cobbles waiting for their deliveries; the ship is always late.

The Land Rover reverses, swings to point north.

Unless, Viola reasons, there is a quicker way to get to Lark, and always has been, some covert system of speedboats and helicopters impervious to the conditions out there, some method not available to mere mortals.

She steps out of the path of the Land Rover and drops Dot back onto the cobbles, retrieving the lead from her mouth.

Of course not. It takes days to reach Lark.

Then it dawns on her, seizes her like a hand to her throat. She has messed up too. Failed in Geography and Mathematics all over again. She really is a dunce.

This whole thing has been orchestrated to coincide with the arrival of the April ship, but that’s no use. It needed to be timed to coincide with its departure from port, three days before, so the mainland police would know to board the ship in the first place and be on their way now. Viola’s stomach lurches; she is sickened by her own stupidity.

‘They won’t keep you hanging around for too long,’ Saul calls before driving away. ‘They’ll be here any minute.’

The Land Rover kicks up dust on the road above the East Bay.

Viola snatches her head around towards the Counting House, then the other way, up towards the estate, the chapel, the school.

Then, knowing what she knows, Viola runs.

The Book of Leah

THE BOOK OF LEAH

The game continued into October.