‘Not that I know of,’ he said. ‘The only woman on her own was here last week. Funny one, she was. Never spoke a word to anyone. A looker, but like a ghost. If it’s the one I’m thinking of, she went off with the boat on Friday. A few of us tried to make conversation, but she seemed to be in a world of her own. Was a mystery why she came at all, as she weren’t no twitcher and seemed out of place somehow. Bit snobby really, I suppose.’

George sat back down. As he and Molly sipped their drinks, he said he’d make some enquiries in the morning with the other wardens, and then with the boatman when he came back at the end of the week, to see if he had noticed whether anyone had met the woman off the boat. It might be through the boatman that he could find out more about the mystery woman.

‘What do you think she could have done?’ Molly asked.

‘I’ve really no idea,’ he said, disappointingly uninterested.

Molly herself tried to imagine the man – if it was a man – who had written the card. Perhaps he had once loved the woman deeply, but now . . . ? Umpteen scenarios kept Molly awake all night, and her dreams were a mix of mist and elephants and a robin that everyone kept chasing away.

In the end it was the boatman who solved the mystery of the woman, not because he’d seen anything, but because he had brought the newspapers across to the island. After a cooked breakfast and an early-morning walk to greet the boat, George had settled down with a coffee and had caught up with the week’s news. His eyes were drawn to a short paragraph on the inside page, and he knew the postcard’s owner had been found:

Woman’s body discovered in motel room

Police were called to a motel in St David’s early yesterday morning, where they found the body of a woman. She had drowned in the bath and has been identified as 57-year-old Clara Springer, an American-born wildlife artist who painted under the name of Vanessa Gough. She had been living in England for the last seven years. Her husband is serving a life sentence in a prison in Florida and has been informed of her death.

‘You’d better send the card to the police, love,’ George finally said.

‘Yes, I know,’ Molly replied and went to retrieve it, thinking again of the elephants. Did they really remember Clara and her husband? Suddenly she desperately hoped they did. Who will remember me, she thought, if I don’t come through the operation? Who will speak out my name? Will George? She looked up out of the window and saw a tern gliding effortlessly in the distance.

Skokholm will, it seemed to say. Skokholm will.

And, smiling through the ever-present tears, she took the postcard back in to George.

Thin Air

A group of old university friends leave the bright lights of London and travel to Unst, Shetland’s most northerly island, to celebrate the marriage of one of their friends to a Shetlander. But late on the night of the wedding party, one of them, Eleanor, disappears – apparently into thin air. It’s mid-summer, a time of light nights and unexpected mists. The following day, Eleanor's friend Polly receives an email. It appears to be a suicide note, saying she'll never be found alive. And then Eleanor’s body is discovered, lying in a small loch close to the cliff edge.