‘I suppose we could finish up a little early,’ her mother had taken to saying. Or, ‘Maybe just one chapter is enough.’

With November approaching, Deborah Kendrick’s replies had grown thorns. ‘You’re a big girl, Viola, you can work out for yourself what needs to be done!’ She had started wearing a thick, home-knitted cardigan, with holes in sleeves and a missing middle button, every day and even to bed. She sat out on one of the broken wicker chairs on the veranda, surveying the land – ‘Just plotting what to do next, Vee-Vee.’ The tools leant against an outhouse, turning orange with rust. The cup of tea in her mother’s hand went cold before she remembered to drink it. Deborah Kendrick’s only excursions were to chapel on Sunday – but straight home, no shift at the tea urn – and to the Provisions Store. And really, where else might she go?

It was Viola who was the wanderer.

She walked Dot whenever she wanted to now, the dog being hardy enough to stand it. Viola learnt when to trek across estate land and avoid the routines of the gamekeeper, how to hit the cobbles at an hour when a fishing boat came in so there was something to see. At the end of the afternoons, when the bell at St Rita’s sounded, the echo of it reaching across the fields, she made for Cable’s Wood to meet Michael, onwards through the pines to the irresistible Sisters’ Stones.

Those hours she spent walking, Viola considered how to get what she wanted – to go to school – how to position it to her mother without sinking her any further. Deborah Kendrick was gradually slipping, slipping, going under once again.

Then, the island intervened.

Viola returned from a spying trip one afternoon to see the Land Rover parked in front of the farmstead, the Customs Officer leaning against the bonnet. He nodded at her as she passed with Dot, a hello that also felt like an apology. On the veranda, a man had pulled up one of the wicker chairs so he could sit close to her mother, who looked fixedly out at the horizon of trees, not at their visitor. Viola came slowly up the wooden steps, the guest turning in his seat, smiling, standing.

Mr Crane.

‘Ah, here she is!’ he said, as if talking to a much younger child. ‘Viola Kendrick! We were just talking about you!’

Viola stalled on the top step. She felt Dot stall too, sensed the dog looking up at her, enquiringly, asking, What now?

‘I wonder if you could tell me how you are doing with your home-schooling, Viola?’ The man strode towards her, hitching up the belt of his trousers. When he reached her, he placed a hand on her shoulder, too gently. ‘Do you think that you are getting all that you need from it?’