“Could I keep the scarf?” he said before she went. “ I’m sorry, but the police may want it.”

“Ben will be sad,” she said. “ He was so proud to have a present to give me.”

She removed the scarf and handed it to him, then said goodbye and walked off, along the path by the cliff.

Sarah was enjoying herself immensely. This was what island life was all about, she thought, a communal effort for the good of the whole island. She walked over the hill beside Jim and felt excited as the sheep approached the wall and were driven into the field. She joined in the cheers as the gate was closed behind them. This is better than working inside, in a hospital ward, she thought, wondering how she could ever have doubted that she would settle on Kinness. But as she walked past Kell with Jim, on her way home to Unsta for lunch, she saw Melissa’s sad, frightened face at a dark window and suddenly she was not quite so certain.

Once Elspeth was out of sight of George Palmer-Jones she stopped, and sat on the spongy soil at the top of the cliff where the puffin holes and rabbit burrows seemed only to be held together by the roots of the thrift. She thought of the story of Ellie, her namesake, who had died by jumping over the cliff in 1925. If I were going to commit suicide, she thought, that’s how it would be. There must be an exhilaration in the act of jumping, in the speed of the air. It must be like flying. But she knew that it was impossible for her to think of dying. She had Ben to care for and he had lost enough.

She looked at her watch. It was nearly lunchtime and her parents would be worried about her. She should try to do more for them, she thought, help in the shop. She owed them that at least. If she had married Jim, everything would have been different. She remembered the letter she had written to him from Glasgow, all the lies. It had been the kindest thing to do. But that wouldn’t have worked either. She had been right in deciding that.

When she got back to the post office, the windows were open. She could hear her parents talking.

“It’s not natural,” Kenneth Dance was saying. “She’s my only daughter and I love her, but there’s something wrong with her. What happened in Glasgow wasn’t natural, and nor is this wandering round the cliffs on her own all day. She should snap herself out of it. She should think of the child, after all he’s been through.”

“We must be patient,” Annie said. “We can’t know what it was like there in Glagow with no one to turn to.”