Forgoing all promises only to write to Aidan about general goings-on and not alarm him, with Nettie’s help she set down everything that happened while it was still fresh in her mind. Not satisfied with that — after all, what could Aidan do from Bavaria? — she wrote to his former commanding officer as well, a Colonel Johns in Edinburgh. Knowing the disturbing contents might be dismissed if she signed it as a woman, she signed this one exactly as Aidan had those he’d written about events in Pittenweem: ‘A Gentleman of Fife’.

She entrusted the missive to the injured soldiers, knowing it would be delivered. In the meantime, she thought constantly about that dreadful night, equally appalled and saddened that the people of Pittenweem continued with their lives as if nothing had happened. With few exceptions, Janet’s name wasn’t mentioned. It was as if she never existed.

That Sunday after Janet was murdered, she and Nettie had waited until people had flocked to the kirk as usual and then walked down to the harbour, passing the Lawson house and the exact spot where the murder had taken place. The body was gone, the cobbles scrubbed. It was only when they arrived at the waterfront and saw the other fishwives, who’d also declined to go to kirk, that they learned from Jean Durkie that Janet’s corpse had been placed in a shallow grave on the western braes.

‘Just like Thomas’s,’ said Jean.

‘Not quite,’ corrected Sorcha. ‘Thomas was never buried.’

The next day, Monday, shops opened as usual. People bought goods, ordered milk and eggs from the farms, purchased fish from her and Nettie when they tramped through the lanes, blethered and gossiped. As the days went by, they fell sick, gave birth, laughed and wept. No one raised the matter of Janet Cornfoot: not with Sorcha, Nettie, Beatrix, Nicolas, Isobel, the Cornfoot family, nor with any of the fishwives. Sorcha didn’t know whether to be grateful or furious.

As it was, she just felt hollow. The town was a place she no longer knew.

A few days after Janet’s death, Nettie, Beatrix, Nicolas and Isobel gathered around the fireplace in Sorcha’s cottage, untouched quaichs of whisky in their hands. While it wasn’t the fishwives’ way to revisit tragedy, Nettie had determined this was different. Only Sorcha had borne witness to Janet’s final moments. In order to survive whatever lay ahead, whatever monster Janet’s death had unleashed, they needed to know the details. For Sorcha’s sake, for all their sakes, they had to speak of this.

‘Tell us, hen,’ said Nettie, reaching across and laying a reassuring hand on her leg. ‘Tell them what you saw.’