They were sitting at the table, drinking the wine. It seemed to Sarah that the conversation was important to Jim. When he came into the house after shooting the rabbits, he had seemed different, as if he had made up his mind about something. It was quite dark outside now. She stared out of the window. There were a couple of lights on the horizon—boats, she supposed—but otherwise there was a dense, deep darkness. It’s never this dark on the mainland, she thought. There’s always a light somewhere, even if it’s the reflected glow of a town miles away, or car headlights.

“I was brought up with it,” Jim repeated. “We all were. The story of Ellie. The fact that very few Dances survived. Perhaps that was what attracted me to Elspeth. I thought that we would get married and that the island would be brought together again.”

She waited for him to tell her more about Elspeth, but he said nothing.

“Robert thinks the feud has nothing to do with the storm now,” she said. “ He says it’s all about freight charges and shop prices.”

“Perhaps he’s not so simple-minded after all.”

There was another silence.

“I want to tell you about Elspeth.”

“Robert told me you were going to be married. Were you engaged?

“No. It was nothing like that. Nothing formal. We were both very young.”

He poured himself more wine.

“She’s a year older than me, so she went out to school in Baltasay before I did. I never got to know her at school. She was living in the hostel and by that time I had lodgings with one of Maggie’s aunts. It was one summer. I was the same age as Will is now and we were both here on Kinness. She was lively, fun, and I suddenly realized how pretty she was. She’d applied to go to drama school in Glasgow, though she hadn’t heard then whether or not she’d got in … It was a lovely summer. Hot for here. And in early summer it’s light nearly all night. I can’t remember helping much on the croft. Every day I was out with Elspeth. We swam and walked, and talked for hours and hours. She read me bits of plays. I didn’t understand them, but I loved to hear her do all the voices. She was older than me. She was an only child, and I suppose the Dances had more money to spend on her. She used to go and stay in Glasgow with friends Kenneth had made there, and once she spent a month in France learning the language. She seemed stylish and sophisticated.