As the Ruth Isabella approached the harbour Sarah watched Jim with pride. He seemed so surefooted, so competent. He saw her and smiled. She wished that some outsider was there so that she could have pointed to Jim and said: “ That’s my man. He belongs here and so do I.” She looked around for George Palmer-Jones. He would have done, but he was not there. She assumed that he was embarrassed about his foolish allegation that Mary had been murdered. His silence that morning proved that he had changed his mind. She turned back to the boat and waited for Jim to come ashore.

Ben Dance did not go home immediately after school. He wanted to hurt his mother because she had not been there in the morning to have breakfast with him or to see him off to school. He followed the other children down the road towards the harbour, but on the way he was distracted and played alone until long past teatime.

On Ellie’s Head George searched the rocky outcrops and peered down the geos looking for a cheap green scarf. Then he climbed down the rabbit track to the beach below, moving the shingle with his Wellingtons and scouring the rock pools, until it was too dark to see.

Chapter Seven

Sandy Stennet and Kenneth Dance decided together that they would have the Hill Gather. They met, like elder statesmen on neutral territory, by the church early in the morning and looked at the sky, and lifted fingers to the wind. The fine weather would hold, they decided. They would share responsibility for holding the Hill Gather. All summer the hill sheep had been left to wander. Now they had to be collected for dipping, and each family would be allocated their share of the hill lambs. It was a formidable task to round up the sheep. The hill covered an area of nearly two square miles. The men and dogs would stand at the north end of Kinness, near the lighthouse and over the hill in a line, driving the sheep before them. Just north of Kell a stone wall had been built from the road to the west cliffs. The sheep would be driven down that and collected into one of Kell’s fields. There they would be dipped and sorted.