Sophie didn’t wake until Hattie had lit the camping stove and made coffee. Then she stretched extravagantly, blinking in the light of the Tilley lamp. Hattie watched her through the open bedroom door. Sophie always slept naked and now sat quite comfortably, apparently not feeling the cold at all, with her breasts exposed, her long tawny hair falling around her shoulders. Hattie envied her. I was never that comfortable with my body, she thought, not even as a child. Why would any man want to sleep with me? Sophie, her legs still encased by the sleeping bag, looked like a mermaid or the figurehead of one of the sailing ships that in Hattie’s imagination had brought goods to trade with her merchant husband.

Hattie would have liked to ask who was in the Pier House the night before. Who did you stay up drinking with? But as usual the words stayed inside her head.

‘Is there anything for breakfast?’ Sophie asked. ‘I’m starving.’

Sophie was always starving. She ate like a horse without putting on weight. A natural athlete, she loped across the island at a pace that left Hattie breathless and panting, and she could work all day without seeming to get tired. Recently she’d been recruited by Anna to take her place in the Whalsay women’s rowing team. Hattie had watched her practising with the group, bending and pulling on the oars, collapsing in laughter at the end of the session. Why can’t I be like that? Hattie thought now. I’m scared of the world and I always have been. I can’t blame Paul Berglund for that. The image of her supervisor slid into her brain, filled it with his size and his strength. She felt a return of the old panic and forced herself to breathe slowly, to retreat to her dreams of the merchant house and her island lover.

‘I’m starving,’ Sophie repeated.

‘There’s bread,’ Hattie said. ‘Some of Evelyn’s marmalade.’

‘That’ll keep us going until elevenses at Mima’s.’ Sophie stepped out of her sleeping bag. Hattie was embarrassed by the sight of the girl’s naked body, but fascinated too. She couldn’t help looking at it, at the flat belly, the golden pubic hair, the muscular shoulders. She turned away quickly and began to slice bread.

Usually Sophie was full of chat about what had happened in the bar the night before, the island gossip, news of any overseas trawlers that had put into Symbister during the day, men she fancied, but this morning she seemed subdued and got dressed in silence. She opened the main door of the Bod and looked outside.

‘God,’ she said. ‘Do you think this fog will ever clear? It’s getting me down. Don’t you long for sun and a clear blue sky? It’s spring. In the south there’ll be green leaves and primroses.’