‘It’s against the law,’ Vera said, though hadn’t she turned a blind eye too? She’d moved out of the house in the hills as soon as she could, but she knew what Hector was up to.

‘What will you do?’ Laidlaw asked.

‘Nothing,’ Vera said. ‘None of my business.’

And a fortnight later she’d received an application form for a new post in CID.

Now she sat in the bar of the hotel on Holy Island, drinking whisky and rereading the piece in the Newcastle Journal that had brought her here. An article about recently retired Chief Constable Judith Laidlaw, who had ended her career in the Thames Valley, but had begun her service in Northumbria. It seemed she’d already been awarded an OBE in the Honours List for her probity and the quality of her leadership.

Vera went back to the bar and raised a glass to her benefactor, to Hector’s other woman.

The Pirate

The girl arrived at the island on the launch; she’d obviously just come into Scilly because she had luggage with her, and I was sitting outside the Turk’s Head to catch the news and see who was coming into St Agnes. She caught my eye immediately, striding up the jetty with the other tourists. She was wearing a leather three-cornered hat, battered and well worn, and a red jacket. In my head I named her the pirate. She was straight-backed and fierce, and I liked her at once. She reminded me of myself when I was a young woman, free and easy and at the art school in Falmouth. Now I’m sixty. I watch and I paint and I worry about dying. The drink or the smoking will kill me soon.

I saw the girl later from the front window of my studio. I grew up in this cottage and it came to me when my parents died. It has a view over Periglis, perhaps the best view in the island. I’ve been offered a fortune for the house, but what would I want with more money? My paintings sell well, and occasionally dealers come on the scrounge, prodding and flattering and asking to buy direct, but I always send them away. My agent looks after that sort of thing. He rips me off, but I can’t be arsed to make a fuss. Life’s too short. Each day here, with this view and the light over the lake and the sea beyond, is enough. That and the possibility that one day I’ll make a perfect piece of art.

The girl walked past the lake with her rucksack on her back. No man. I liked that too. I’ve had lovers, of course, and was considered rather wild even in middle age. There were no children. I still brood about that on the bad days when my work’s not going well. I think I might have made a good mother. But for years I’ve been on my own and that’s how I like it.

On an impulse I followed her and watched her put up a tent at the campsite at Troytown. She was deft and competent, and it was like seeing a ghost of my younger self at work. I didn’t approach her and she didn’t see me. I knew that I’d bump into her again. St Agnes is a small place and islanders and trippers all end up in the Turk’s Head eventually.