“You were asleep,” Sylvia said. “ You were late last night, and then they got you out so early this morning.”

“No,” he said. “ Not asleep. I was just thinking.”

“About Mary?”

He nodded.

“She used to come to see me sometimes,” she said. “You know that her parents had asked special permission for her to stay on at school here, because of her handicap. Otherwise she would have started at the big school on Baltasay this term. Sometimes she said that she wished that they would let her go and that it would be fun to live in the hostel with all the others, and at other times she was desperate to stay. I don’t know which would have been best for her.…

“She used to love to read my magazines, especially the fashion articles. Once I caught her in my bedroom, putting on the make-up which was lying around on the dressing table. I suppose that she was just a normal twelve-year-old and she never had a chance to do that sort of thing at home. Agnes must have been forty when she had Mary so there was quite a generation gap between them. She still treated her as a very young child, and Mary reacted accordingly—tantrums and all.”

George had an idea.

“That scarf that she was wearing all day yesterday,” he said. “Do you know where she got it?”

“Oh yes,” Sylvia said. “It was mine. I gave it to her.”

Sarah stayed with Jim at Sandwick in the afternoon while they prepared to receive the police. Alec was there, too, until eventually he went home to tell Maggie what was happening and to collect his car. Will was out all afternoon. No one knew where he had gone.

“I’d better go home,” she said when they heard the plane coming low over the house. “They won’t want to talk to me.”

“No, I don’t suppose that they will.”

“You’ll come back as soon as you can?”

Agnes kissed her before she went and thanked her for being there, and sent her quickly home. She saw Will, standing on the boulder beach below Unsta throwing pebbles into the tide. She almost approached him to offer him comfort, but he seemed absorbed in himself. Perhaps he wanted to be alone, and besides it was very cold.