He arrived at Unsta. The curtains were drawn and he could not see in. He opened the porch door, and was just about to go into the house when he stopped and knocked. I have never had to knock on this door, he thought. Well, everything has to change.

Because he had knocked on the door for the first time, he saw and heard everything as if for the first time. An old oilskin was hanging in the porch and reminded him of fishing trips with his father. He heard the background sound of waves on shingle, and the chug of the generator from its shed at Buness over the lane.

The door opened and Jim stood there, scrubbed and spruce, with the light behind him.

“You didn’t have to knock,” Jim said. “ Will you come in?”

“Better not,” said his father. “They’re all there now and waiting for you both. You know what they’re like.”

“Waiting to get at the food and the dancing.”

Sandy nodded.

Sarah heard them talking.

“I’m just coming,” she shouted. “ I’m nearly ready.”

She came out through the bedroom door and stood in the hall. Jim moved out of the doorway and into the darkness of the porch, so that both men could see her framed by the light. Her long hair was loose and she wore not a veil, but a white shawl of local lace pinned to her hair, which fell around her shoulders.

“Do I look all right?” she asked. “Will I do?”

“You’ll do fine,” Sandy said. “You’ll do just fine.”

He stepped into the house to take her hand, and she could see then that he was beaming. He looks like a furry animal, she thought, with his round face and round nose and big front teeth. She realized that he looked just like an illustration of Ratty in an edition of Wind in the Willows which she had loved as a child.

She took his arm and the three of them walked together up the road to the hall. It was on some high ground in the middle of the southern bulge of the island. Sarah could see it almost as soon as they left Unsta because of the long lit windows and the light outside its door. As they approached she could hear the talking and the laughing.

“I’m nervous,” she said. “ I never thought that I would be.”

She had been talking to Jim, but Sandy replied.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” he said. “ Not here on Kinness. You’re home now. Besides, you don’t have to do anything except look pretty.”

They had arrived at the door of the hall. Although it had been a warm day, it was colder now, with the sharp clarity of autumn. They hesitated.