‘It’s a tonic I made from bistort root.’

‘I don’t want it,’ I told her.

‘I heard you being sick, through the wall. This is good for that.’

‘I said –’

‘It’s good for wounds on the outside too.’ She was looking at my knees, covered by a pair of marl pyjamas.

‘Did you see?’ The thought that anyone had witnessed me leaving the Customs House, dishevelled and bleeding, brought on a fresh and brutal wave of nausea.

Margaritte shrugged evasively.

I got up, staggering to the opposite side of the room. I needed there to be space between us; I had to see her for what she was – a deluded woman too attached to the old ways.

‘You take that stuff away,’ I told her.

‘But it’s just herbs, Leah.’

‘You know it isn’t. I should never have been sucked in. What you do is against God.’

She laughed loudly. ‘You tell that to Father Daniel!’ she replied. ‘After he fell out with Dr Bishy and couldn’t be going to his surgery anymore, I cured his pink-eye with a clary water, just like that.’

She clicked her fingers.

I did not know what to question first – the reverend’s engagement in the dark arts, or his falling out with the doctor. Both were irrelevant.

‘Jacob Crane has his sights on you,’ I warned. ‘On me too.’

She sighed and looked down for a moment, blinking upwards again to ask: ‘Are you frightened of him?’

‘Yes!’ came an unbidden voice. To my surprise, it was my own. Was this true? Was I scared of Jacob Crane? And if I was, couldn’t it be justified, wasn’t it to be expected? I had known him only as my headmaster, then straight away as my superior at work. Didn’t everyone on the island hold him in some kind of fearful reverence?

‘Aren’t you?’ I returned. ‘Frightened of him?’

‘Actually,’ she said, easing herself up from the sofa, placing a hand gently on my arm as she left, ‘I think it’s time that he was frightened of us.’

On the Monday, when I still hadn’t returned to St Rita’s, Cat Walton knocked on my door, the tails of her curate’s gown flapping beneath her short, bulbous Puffa jacket.

‘I’m here in my professional capacity,’ she said, ‘responsible as I am for all the souls of this parish.’