“They hadn’t done last night, when I went to bed. Alec and Jim came here later, not long after we came back. They came to get some warmer clothes. Jim said that he hadn’t unpacked, and borrowed Alec’s. They’d looked in all the obvious places then, but she hadn’t been found.”

“You haven’t heard anything this morning?”

Maggie shook her head. “But then I’d be the last person to hear. You’ll get used to that.”

She straightened her back and switched off the machine.

“I’m going to make a cup of tea,” she said. “ Come on in and have one.”

Sarah hesitated.

“I was going to find Jim. I thought I might be able to help.”

“They’ll let you know if you can be any use. Come on in.”

Awkwardly Sarah went.

Robert found Mary and he wasn’t really looking for her. After looking in the empty buildings and Mary’s usual hiding places, the men had stopped at Sandwick. Robert had followed them at first, after the dancing had finished, limping after them, afraid of missing anything. But he wasn’t invited back to Sandwick and he went home and slept.

He woke early and went looking for wood. Wood was precious on Kinness, and had been more so when he was a boy and imports were unheard of. All the furniture on the island had been made of driftwood. Robert still hoarded driftwood. He did not use it so much himself now, but it pleased him when one of the younger men came begging for a plank to mend a fence or build a new gate.

He scrambled down a rabbit track, sliding on his bottom with his stiff leg out before him, to the rock and shingle at the base of the cliffs, and began to walk along the tide line. His dog was with him as it always was. The fresh wind of the day before promised well. He found some small pieces of wood and began to make a pile above the tide line. He would mark the pile with his own sign—a circle of pebbles—so that anyone else scavenging would know that it was his. He would take it home later, a little at a time.

He found the girl below Ellie’s Head, crushed like a doll on the rocks. She had landed above the line of the tide, and her clothes were hardly wet. He felt a moment of pity, but accidental death was not so unusual there. He went back to Sandwick to tell Agnes and Sandy, but before he did so he marked his pile of driftwood with a circle of pebbles.