‘Thank you, you’re very kind. It’s lovely to be taken care of.’ She dropped a couple of euro into his hand. He beamed and put her bag on the ferry.

Fifteen minutes later, she was enjoying a coffee and doughnut and the wide smiles of a waiter who insisted on bringing it to her table. She watched mainland Greece recede into the distance, and half an hour later, caught sight of Kea lighthouse.

*

At Popi’s Apartments, on the promenade, she turned her watch forward by two hours, and saw it was four in the morning, local time.

She dumped her suitcase in the room, made coffee, then sat on the balcony. The ferry had left, the place absolutely silent and pitch dark. Then her eyes and ears adjusted. She saw the dense, star-spangled sky broken only by a pulse from the distant lighthouse. The gentle shush of wavelets caressing the beach below reminded her she would swim later.

After some time, Shelly stuck a small bottle of water into her backpack and stepped out with camera and torch to photograph the sunrise. She walked along the water’s edge and inhaled the ozone-rich sea air. In Britain, the sea had a pungent, fish-and-chips saltiness, but the Aegean air was so salted-caramel she licked her lips. She sat on the warm sand, hugged her knees, and remembered the first time she had come to a Greek island. She was sixteen, on an adventure with the man she loved. Oh, David. How could she have known that one, self-indulgent week, nearly twenty years ago, would destroy so many lives?

Shelly had dozed through the flight and now yawned and stretched, her head muzzy and eyes watering. The idea of staying up to capture the sunrise lost its appeal. There would be another dawn tomorrow. As she turned, her torchlight caught a row of deep, undulating paddle-tracks across the sand just ahead. Goosebumps rose on her arms and a rush of adrenalin wiped out her weariness.

What good luck was this! She backed up a few metres and dropped to her knees, the sand damp under her shins. Turning the torch off after switching the camera on, she flicked the ISO to its highest setting. The picture would be grainy, but using flash under the circumstances was unthinkable. Her heart pounded. She made a conscious effort to breathe quietly and stared into the shadow of the low tamarisk trees. Apart from the first soft sounds of the dawn chorus and the gentle clack of rolling pebbles on the waterline, silence surrounded her. She felt at one with nature, like a wild animal herself.

Perhaps the turtle had been and gone? She couldn’t make out a returning trail in the sand. Ten minutes passed. She feared her camera battery would run flat. Then, gathering light illuminated movement to her left and she heard the scrape – scrape – scrape.