Perez stood at the back of the hall, furthest from the speakers. All the chairs had been taken but Anna thought that was where he had chosen to be. He wanted to see everything going on in the hall. Sandy Wilson sat with Hattie’s mother near the front. There was no sign of Joseph and that surprised Anna. She’d have thought Evelyn would have dragged him along. Sandy was wearing a suit, the one he’d worn to their wedding, his face was red and he looked uncomfortable. Anna knew Ronald would have hated all this. How grateful he’ll be to me that I’ve given him the excuse to stay at home! She looked forward to describing the evening to him. History was his passion, after all. She knew he’d be interested.

Jackie rushed in right at the last minute, just as Evelyn was about to start speaking. Although the weather was unusually calm, Jackie had a windswept, thrown together look that was quite unlike her. One of her nieces was a hairdresser and always came to do her hair before an evening out, but now it seemed she’d hardly had time to pull a brush through it.

Anna looked at Jackie across the hall and decided there must have been another crisis with Andrew. She reflected that she should be more considerate about her parents-in-law. She shouldn’t make such a fuss when Ronald went up to the big house to help out. She’d been rather a bitch about them.

All these thoughts were running at the back of her head while she was listening to the presentations. She sat with a fixed look of concentration on her face and nobody would have realized her mind was elsewhere. Though perhaps everyone is the same, she thought, and she sneaked a look at the audience and tried to picture the ideas and preoccupations of the individuals who sat in respectful silence. They clapped when each speaker sat down, but perhaps there were other images running like a film in their heads too. We think we know each other so well, but we all have our secrets.

Paul Berglund went first. Anna had never met him. She’d been out giving birth when the skull had been found and Evelyn had never introduced them. He gave a very short speech. Perhaps it was his accent but the words seemed ungracious, almost dismissive.

‘The university has always been delighted to support the Whalsay project, and of course it will continue to do so despite the tragic death of Hattie James.’

Anna had the impression that Evelyn had been expecting more, a promise of definite funding and more PhD students, an altogether grander project. She thought the most likely thing was that the dig would be forgotten, by the university at least.