– What did your father die from, Jessie?

– The consequences of evil.

She glances toward the consulting room. There are loud crashes. She takes a small key and locks the door as if she has done so many times before.

– He’ll pass out soon!

Elise opens talcum powder and dusts some into the palm of her hand and then combs it through her hair.

– I wash my hair once every three weeks, it’s why it is so shiny!

The dimple in her cheek disarms me. She lays down on the bed beside me. We sleep and wake. She sends the maid out for food and has her deliver it to our door on a tray and then she is dismissed. We hear Mr Udnam go out and Elise keeps him away from me and I watch my stomach grow bigger. I am trapped now. Can’t take it back. Life finds its way. On the third morning she wakes me with coffee and places her hand on the bump. A small elbow or a foot slides on the underside of my skin.

– Three days ago, Elise, I took a bottle of tinct iodine – washed it out and stoppered my secrets.

– Aye?

– Aye. I placed it in the sea. I like to think my secrets will be passing under migrating whales in a bottle right now. I hope they turn under the moon. Or the shadow of hammerhead sharks twist below it. I hope an albatross crosses it with her huge wing-spanned shadow. I hope barnacles adorn its bottle neck. I hope seahorses swim below it in shoals. I hope they are giant seahorses with ornate trunks! I hope someone finds the bottle. Sees that it is pretty. Takes out my letter. Puts flowers in it and drinks tea from a china cup and saves my secrets in a tea tin for someone else to read in a hundred years.

– Did you have a funeral, for your father?

– Aye. There is an order to things on the island though. As soon as someone dies you snap open the window to let the spirit out, then close it again so it doesn’t come back in. Then you throw a blanket on the mirror so they can’t stay and preen themselves. Spirits are vain creatures. You tip over all the kitchen chairs so the spirit cannot sit and refuse to leave like a child in a huff!

– What else?

She is rapt now.

– You stop the clock at the time of death.

– Why?

– The dead’s time is done, time won’t move on for them again.

– Harsh!

– Press white wooden teardrops into the front door, so the funeral crier will be notified by a passer-by. He calls out. Seven women leave their homes. In our case, the women only came to host his waken out of goodness. The men only took him on their shoulders to make sure he was gone.