When Katrina had first come to the island, Fiona had recognized the bewilderment in her as though it had been her own. In someone else it might have made her angry, but Fiona saw how Katrina guarded her weakness just as she herself did, and perhaps it was this that had made Fiona unbend to her. They had been close for a while, when Katrina had first arrived and was still struggling. Fiona believed they had been close, at any rate. She sometimes thought she had never been happier than during that first year, when she saw Katrina almost every day. She hadn’t had a close friend before, not since she was a young girl at least. Fiona had often wondered why, and had even wept over it in secret a few times, when she was much younger. She had watched other women in the past, noticing how easily they seemed to form friendships with one another. With her, there was always, it appeared, some invisible barrier that could not be surmounted, some simple trick that eluded her. People never gave her quite what she wanted, and she sometimes thought she caught them turning discreetly away from her, turning towards others instead, so that she wanted to clutch at them and say, “What is it I’m not giving you? Tell me, and I’ll give it.” She tried so hard, and other people were not grateful.

Katrina had been, though. Fiona had thought that whatever the trick was, she had finally mastered it. For once, it had felt easy. But it was natural, of course, that it had not lasted. Katrina had a young family and a husband to look after, and once she was coping better it was only to be expected that her focus would turn inwards again. The raising of the drawbridge had been so slow and gentle that Fiona hardly noticed until Katrina was completely walled off. Fiona’s visits to Katrina grew shorter and less frequent—often Katrina wouldn’t be in, or even if she was, Fiona did not feel welcome—and Katrina rarely returned them. They remained friends (Fiona thought so, at any rate), but they were no longer close, especially by the time Katrina’s boys were in school. Fiona had not resented it, of course; she had understood. Katrina was not the type to have close friends, and her first priority had to be her husband and children. She was the kind of person who didn’t need to look outside the home for her fulfilment. Nevertheless, Fiona could not help it if sometimes she felt she had been . . . well, used was the word. She felt a little used.