The coycrock girl was not the right person to steer those girls back towards the light. The evidence had been there all along; they should have taken note. She loitered in fields, in alleyways and at the harbour. She had been caught meddling with Peter Cedars’ dogs and kept an animal of her own as a familiar, watching it defecate on the cobbles, tying up what it produced in little bags that she carried home for some mysterious purpose. She had been observed in the Provisions Store damaging the fruit. Clearly, the girl was in excellent health with all the wandering that she did, yet still she did not attend school.

The mother was also skiving, from the land and, more recently, from chapel. So many families over the years had applied for a place on the island and been rejected, including one with a trio of hardy-looking sons. What error of judgement had led the Council to choose the Kendricks?

The sympathetic proposed that Deborah Kendrick, an upright, practical and pious candidate, had simply fallen ill and was now struggling to cope. This hypothesis gave rise to panic. Was she battling a mainland disease, one that Lark immune systems might not have the armoury to survive? In the Provisions Store, whenever the woman showed her pale face – what you could see of it beneath those wild curls – she was given a wide berth. Hands went to mouths to avoid the inhalation of germs.

Dr Bishy was forced to schedule a talk at the Counting House to allay the islanders’ fears. It was held in place of the planned session for the public removal of the plaster cast from Andy Cater’s broken wrist, an event the young of the island had been ghoulishly looking forward to.

What Deborah Kendrick was suffering from, the doctor reassured those who sat forward on their chairs in the meeting room to hear, was not a deadly flu strain, or Typhoid. It was certainly not Ebola. The woman had a sickness of the mind, something common on the mainland, something not unexpected at her time of life, with no husband to care for, her childbearing done.

Women of a similar age in the audience shared wary glances.

‘But, be confident,’ the doctor continued, leaning against the raised stage at the head of the room to convey how relaxed he was about the situation, ‘these sicknesses are not sicknesses at all if left well alone, if they are not pandered to or the patient mollycoddled.’ Then he repeated the prescription he had given the woman herself. ‘The only cure is fresh air and hard work – which Lark, I’m pleased to say, is able to provide in bucketfuls.’

Meanwhile, the daughter’s influence on the Eldest Girls was starting to display its symptoms.

‘We refuse to do A Midsummer Night’s Dream as our A-Level text,’ Britta Sayers had announced in class one morning, with a flick of her long ropes of hair.