But the room remained empty and still. Vacated. Long ago abandoned. To reach for otherwise was a futile exercise in hope over experience, because if Life had taught him anything, it was that anything could happen. That fate was capricious and cruel. And no one could be trusted.

They were ominously silent on the boat over, Hanna at the tiller, Bell and Linus on the bench seats, packed bags at their feet, the twins bundled in life jackets. Usually Linus sat by the edge, chin on one hand as the other trailed down in the silky water, but this morning he was holding his small body closed and still, as though he was a robin’s egg in a giant’s fist.

He had heard the truth only two hours ago, broken over the ‘special breakfast’ his mother had prepared for him. Bell had been in the laundry room, discreetly out of the way, folding the bed sheets as Hanna had haltingly explained that it wasn’t Max who was his father, but the man in the hospital bed. Yes, the crazy one. But he was better now, and that not-crazy-any-more man wanted Linus to live with him for a few weeks over the summer. And that those few weeks over the summer were starting now. In two hours.

A tear had slid down her cheek as she’d heard his stunned responses: ‘What?’; ‘Why?’; ‘Do I have to?’; ‘I don’t want to.’ But worse had been his silences, each of them distinct, as though painted in different colours: shocked. Aghast. Frightened. Angry. Bitter. Defeated.

Bell felt much the same herself, but she at least was an adult; she had a choice whether to do this or not. It was only the fact that Linus so patently didn’t that persuaded her to be there too. How could she let him go through this alone?

Their three erect bodies looked as stiff as chess pieces as they glided in silence. The water in the lagoon was millpond-calm, ribbon scraps of a tentative mist hovering just above the surface. The islands in the constellation curled around them in a ragged frill, the pine forests a sharp emerald-green in the midsummer light, the splash of kayakers’ oars splintering the silence, bodies already lying on the rocks.

Bell saw a few ringed seals basking on the bleached rocks of Dead Man’s Bones off to their right-hand side, 007 up ahead. She peered, as she always did, through the narrow gaps of the wooded shore, hoping for a glimpse of the palatial property supposedly set at its heart, hidden from prying eyes. But all she could see was a stony path winding through the mossy hummocks, and besides, she had no appetite for gossip or intrigue today anyway. Instead, she fastened her listless gaze on a heron standing motionless in the shallows, wings tucked in, its pointed bill like a golden dagger, waiting to deliver the death blow. She saw how the rocks on the beach were covered with yellow sedum flowers, like thousands of fallen stars. She didn’t notice they were in the lee of the island until Hanna cut the engine on the approach to the jetty.