Her breasts were heavy with milk and she thought about James waiting for her at home. She realized she would be buried here. Her life was all mapped out and nothing would get in her way. She and Ronald would have more children. The children would be baptized in this church and later they would marry here. If there were a daughter, Ronald would walk up the aisle with her to give her away. Anna would become a real Whalsay wife, with a kitchen full of grandchilden.

People were starting to drift away now. They had been invited back to Utra for tea. Anna knew that the tea would be too much for Ronald and that anyway they probably wouldn’t be welcome. They would go straight home. She would need to feed James. Evelyn left very quickly. Anna knew how she would be, filling kettles, taking the clingfilm off the scones and the cakes, an apron over the Sunday-best dress. Joseph and his sons remained standing next to the grave.

She was about to take Ronald’s arm and lead him away. She was proud of the way he’d held things together. She knew he’d never wanted to be there and she wondered if she’d been right to insist.

But without her noticing he’d moved away from her and gone to talk to Joseph and the boys. He held his hand out to Michael. She couldn’t hear what he said. Michael hesitated for a moment, looked at his father and his brother and then took the offered hand. Anna remembered Evelyn telling her that he had become quite religious after his marriage. Amelia’s influence. Perhaps he felt it was his duty to forgive. Then Sandy had his arm around Ronald. Both men seemed to be close to tears. Joseph kept his distance, but didn’t seem hostile.

‘It’ll be all right.’ She realized that she’d actually spoken the words under her breath. There was nobody close enough to hear and she repeated them a little louder. This had been a terrible week but they’d got through it. With Mima’s burial out of the way, they’d be able to put the awful events behind them.

As she waited for Ronald to finish talking to Michael and Sandy, Sophie and Paul Berglund came up to speak to her. It seemed they’d walked to the kirk. Sophie looked so pale and drawn that Anna thought she must be sick. Then she remembered that the girl’s friend had died too. Sitting through the service must have made Hattie’s suicide seem very real. Anna was convinced that the police would decide the death was suicide. What else could they think it would be?

‘We wondered if we might have a lift back?’ Berglund said. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’