Instead Perez sat in his room in the Pier House and read Hattie’s letters to her mother. Without any real decision having been made, it seemed he’d taken up residence in the hotel. He’d come back there the evening before after his meeting with the Fiscal. In the morning when he came down to breakfast Jean, the skinny Glaswegian, grinned at him. ‘Still here then?’ Now she knew what he liked: a big pot of very strong coffee, scrambled eggs, brown toast. She’d say, ‘Do you no’ fancy something more substantial this morning?’ But teasing him, not expecting a different order.

Before starting to read the letters, Perez went into the kitchen to find her and asked if she’d be kind enough to make him some coffee to take into his room. She was on her own; Cedric Irvine would be at the funeral. He could tell the woman would have liked him to stay and chat to her, but he was eager to get back to the letters. She had only been on the island a short time and he didn’t think she could have much to tell him. It occurred to him again that he should talk to Cedric about Mima, but because he’d be at the funeral it would have to wait.

The letters were kept in chronological order, though Perez didn’t read them that way. Sandy had told him that Gwen James treasured them, that she’d missed Hattie when she went off to college and would have found it easier to keep her daughter at home, protected. Perhaps Perez had misjudged the woman. His parents had thought it was in his best interests to send him away to school in Lerwick at the age of eleven. But really, he thought, they’d had no choice.