Her own accommodation was a tiny cabin set twenty metres or so back from the family’s main house. They were both painted black, as though to demonstrate the connection to passers-by or trespassers. But where the main house sat dead centre, back from a curved private beach, her tiny cabin was tucked into a thicket of trees at the far end, with a path leading through the moss to a narrow inlet in the rocks. From there, she could step straight down into the water, and it had become something of a private ritual for her to skinny-dip under the midnight sun before bed each night.

The space was almost unimaginably small when she was away from it – just big enough for a bed, table and chair, and tiny kitchenette hidden in a cupboard. The toilet was housed in an add-on room around the back, old-school style, and the shower was outdoors, clad with rickety timber panels and prone to spitting water. It wasn’t the easiest way to live, but the vast majority of her time was spent in comfort at the family house anyway, and she was grateful for the brief respite of peace and solitude at the beginning and end of each day.

The truth was, she could hardly wait to get back there and she felt a small thrill as she began to recognize elements of the nautical landscape. Last year, she had spent a lot of time with Linus particularly, pootling around the neighbouring islands while the girls – only two years old at the time – played on the beach and napped with their parents. She and Linus had kayaked together along the coves almost every day, looking out for orcas and herons and choosing which houses or boats they liked best, so the landmarks from those adventures stood out to her now: the bright-yellow lichen-covered rock at the tip of the island with the freshwater pool in the middle; the ragged flag by the tumbledown, storm-ruined jetty on the island three away from them; the deep cove where they’d found a dead gull in the water. And then, up ahead, the tip of the steepled Sandhamn tower peeking through the trees and announcing itself to passing sailors and travellers. It was set on a tall scaffold, rather like a gigantic dovecote. Max had told her last year that it had originally served as the piloting bridge, or lookout, back when piloting – navigating ships through the straits to Stockholm as commercial trading developed – had been the islanders’ primary income.

The land bellied out and swooped back in again in dynamic curves, the cabins beginning to cluster close together on the rocks like barnacles, and she saw the ferry channel up ahead narrow into a wincingly tight strait as Sandhamn’s shores all but kissed those of its neighbour Lökholmen. Inching through, they rounded a headland and suddenly a small harbour opened out and stretched away from them; fronting the town, it was a mini metropolis in the Baltic vastness.