Her own room was frustratingly charming. It had hand-painted hessian wallpaper, with drawn tendrils of ivy dangling and creeping down from the ceiling in varying lengths. Her bed was a pale grey sleigh-style with a green-and-pink padded eiderdown and there was a vast, peeling painted armoire against one wall which she felt sure must provide passage to Narnia. Everything felt weighty, substantial and grandiose.

Her room overlooked the ‘back’ garden, although given all approaches to the house were by water, she wasn’t sure there was any such thing as front or back; guests simply arrived wherever they docked, surely? The lawn swept around the property like a green velvet cape, flowerbeds dotted whimsically, stray linden trees looking statuesque and dramatic – like eight-pointer stags – compared to the huddled and slender modesty of the birches and pines in the woods.

Downstairs, they had found a dining room with a beautiful whitewashed oval table that looked like it could seat thirty people, a library, a drawing room with some very formal, uncomfortable-looking wooden settles, an exceptionally well-equipped modern gym, an office, the kitchen, a laundry room and behind that, in the darkest corner of the house, a tiny snug with two squashy sofas and a pile of sailing magazines that suggested more life in this space than the whole rest of the building.

Their curious faces at the kitchen door had been taken as proof of hunger – as well as proof of life – and lunch was served on the terrace shortly afterwards by a middle-aged lady who stuck a strawberry on the side of Linus’s fruit juice and extra jam on his waffles. Afterwards, aware they were on show to the various staff who flitted in and out of the house like swifts, they had lazed on the lawn, playing Would You Rather and knocking a ball about with wooden beach bats. Occasionally, Måns would step out onto the terrace with a tray of juice or fruit, but his placid smile couldn’t quite suppress the anxious gleam in his eyes, his gaze constantly darting to the shaded woods at the fringes of the garden. It was the only way in and the only way out. Where was he? It was the question they all wanted answered.

Finally, they told him they were going for an exploration of the island, to ‘get their bearings’ before dusk. It had been an exhausting, anticlimactic day, and although everyone had been kind, Bell knew they both needed some time away from strangers’ eyes before the ritual of going to bed in this foreign house. Linus’s mood was beginning to deteriorate, and who could blame him? He was frustrated and angry about his father’s unexplained disappearance – as was she. It was bad enough for him to be dragged here against his will, but to then find his father wasn’t even here . . . it wasn’t just arrogant, it was insulting.

They left the garden at the front of the house, dipping into the trees and onto the narrow pebble path that seemed to trickle in curving loops around the property. After a day in the sun, with no swimming, it felt good to wander in the shade, and they walked at a slow pace through the trees, ears pricked as tiny creatures rustled in the undergrowth, both of them lost in their own thoughts.