The teacher urged Britta to go on.

‘By marking them like we did, we stopped them from being captured again.’ Britta’s face took on a beatific glaze.

‘I don’t see how that would ever work,’ said Sister Clare, folding her arms.

‘Well, it’s like the runes, isn’t it, Sister?’

‘I beg your pardon!’ exclaimed Sister Agnes, stepping forward.

But Britta was not to be squashed. ‘It’s like the mark of Algiz for healing, Eihwaz for protection, Teiwaz for strength.’

Sister Agnes’ face went as purple as the aubergines she cultivated in the convent greenhouses.

Still, Britta persisted. ‘It’s like the cross that stands at the end of the jetty, to stop our fishermen from dying.’

The holy sister clutched the small wooden crucifix, strung with beads around her neck, Britta seizing upon the action:

‘Like what you’re wearing now!’

This conversation might have been lost and forgotten, dismissed as a young girl sent giddy by the novelty of a lesson outdoors, if the three Eldest Girls hadn’t come to school the following week with matching bandages on their left wrists. There was the smell of rubbing alcohol about them.

Mr Crane had not been in school that morning to demand they remove these non-regulation affectations, and Mrs Leven who stood in his place, was always one to avoid confrontation. It was the lovely Miss Cedars who challenged the girls in the canteen, instructing them to remove the bandages at once. Jaws that had been working away at beef patties and cabbage, slowed and stilled. Every pupil’s gaze settled on the girls lined up before the hot plate.

The handsome coycrock teacher, his back to the scene, was one of the last to notice the stand-off. He rose abruptly, chair legs squealing, his mouth open, ready to protest, but Miss Cedars stopped him with an icy stare.

She turned her attention back to the girls.

‘Come on!’ said the once nice, polite teacher, who had grown stricter of late, shorter in wick. ‘Take the bandages off! Unless you’ve really hurt yourselves. You’ve not really hurt yourselves, have you?’

The Eldest Girls shrugged, unsure, and unravelled the white gauze, revealing the skin beneath, pinpricked and bloodied.

‘What is this?’ asked Miss Cedars, appalled.

On Jade-Marie’s inside wrist was a crude etching of a tree; on Anna’s skin, a skewed Z; and on Britta’s, an upward arrow.

India-ink tattoos.

‘Algiz for healing,’ said Britta, ‘Eihwaz for protection and Teiwaz for the strength of a warrior.’

All went quiet. Miss Cedars was lost for a response. She had not absorbed Britta’s explanation, this elucidation on the runes. Instead she had watched how the girl held Mr Hailey’s gaze as she answered; how the new teacher dropped his chin guiltily to his chest.

The Book of Leah

THE BOOK OF LEAH