‘You’ll be going to the Anchor later for the celebrations, will you?’ Mum asked, lifting the cork out the bottle, not waiting for Dad. There was a directness to her speech that I had not inherited, nor learnt through imitation. We looked alike; I could see my future in the way her lips had thinned and how the skin between her eyes furrowed. I knew my black hair would give way to strands of silver. But I doubted I would ever own that voice.

‘I won’t be, no.’ I pushed another pitted olive into my cheek, enjoying the sensation of its flesh giving way between my teeth.

‘It’s open to women tonight,’ she went on, telling me what I already knew, ‘even though it’s a weeknight.’ She poured two very generous glasses of wine. ‘I think you should go and find out where that handsome teacher is hiding himself.’

I stopped chewing and stared at her.

What handsome teacher? was the reply that rose childishly to my lips. What smashed window? What muddy footprints in the living room?

I took a large mouthful of wine and washed down the olive. I still wasn’t sure if they were truly pleasant things to eat.

‘I see him every day of the week at school,’ I said with a tight smile. ‘I think that’s quite enough, considering the current situation.’

‘Such a shame,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ I replied cautiously; her inflection was not that of a woman appalled at a stranger’s behaviour. Quite the opposite.

‘He seemed so perfect,’ she added wistfully, grasping my hand on the cool of the countertop. I flushed hot and gulped more wine. ‘A fella from the mainland,’ she went on, squeezing my hand tighter, beseeching me with shining eyes. ‘He might have broadened your horizons a little.’

I had no idea how to respond.

The island was against Ben, thought him in conversation with the devil – so my mother must think this also. For all her gentle slanders of Diana Crane, she and her husband were important allies of my parents; together they sat on the Council. Or rather, my father and Jacob did; Diana and my mother brewed the tea and made the sandwiches.

The letter Mr Crane had written was aimed at Ben and the girls, wasn’t it?

Wasn’t it?

Yet Ben was still teaching. Mr Crane still patted him on the back when they passed in the corridor. I should have found the courage to ask my mother what was going on, but my father opened the back door at that moment, making her hand fly from mine, sending her back towards the hob. I was startled at the sight of Dad; the whiteness of his beard and his stoop that had become, all of a sudden, more pronounced.