She said, “I don’t feel like I’m coping well.”

“My dear,” Fiona said, “nobody does. If you’re managing to keep yourself and the baby alive, I’d say you’re doing just fine.”

After that, Fiona took to bringing meals round a couple of times a week: a lasagne or casserole or pie that could easily be heated up.

“It’s no trouble,” she said when Katrina protested. “I’m making the food anyway. It’s no bother to make a few extra helpings.”

She was a kind woman, Katrina thought. Sometimes, tearfully swallowing down Fiona’s food (which she sometimes simply ate cold, straight from the dish) during a short respite as Nicky slept, she felt she’d never loved anyone more than she loved Fiona.

And it did get better, though very slowly. Spring came and although the weather was still cold, the sun was bright and made the sea sparkle. Everywhere, colour returned. Katrina started spending more time with Heather, and felt herself beginning to relax in her presence. She got to know the other islanders—she didn’t have much choice in the matter, so determined were they to include her—and as Katrina grew happier, John seemed warmer towards her again, telling her sometimes how pretty she looked.

When Nicky was just over a year old, Katrina discovered she was pregnant again, and she wasn’t as frightened as she might have predicted. She found she was actually looking forward to having another baby, or if not to the day-to-day reality of it, then at least to the idea of having two children instead of one. She hoped they would love each other and play together. At the thought of this, she felt a pang for Jill, whom she was barely in touch with now. Their phone conversations had become increasingly stilted over the past year, as Katrina found she had less and less she wanted to say to Jill about her life on the island; she couldn’t tell Jill she was unhappy because Jill had predicted it all along. When Chris had left Jill some months before, Katrina had been too exhausted and overwhelmed herself to know what to say, or to offer anything much in the way of comfort. She thought relations had been even more distant between them since then, but nevertheless, when Jill called her up after a couple of months of silence to say she’d taken Henry and moved down to England with him, Katrina was hurt not to have been told about this plan in advance.

“It’s natural that you’ve grown apart,” John said. “You’re very different, and you live very different lives. Besides, I think she’s always been jealous of you.”

“Me?” Katrina said. “No she hasn’t.”

“Jill can be quite difficult sometimes,” John said.