“When he took me, I was supposed to be married to someone else the next day. On the island, babies outside marriage simply don’t happen. I went with him because it was part of my rite, the way that we—how can I put it—strengthen the bloodline? But children, whether conceived on the wedding night or during the wandering night before, must be born into wedlock. Otherwise, they don’t exist, not in the eyes of the elders.”

“That’s bloody ridiculous. It’s the twenty-first century.”

“It doesn’t matter. Tradition and the old ways are what we live by. They are like your laws.”

“Well, why would you want to go back, then? If you can’t take her with you?”

There was a pause, and Ruby thought perhaps Constance would change her mind, see how unreasonable she was being. But she shook her head. “It’s my home. They’re my family. I have to go.”

Ruby stared at her. She didn’t think she would have to say it. The silence stretched out, and it became apparent that she would. “But, Constance, Leonie’s your family too.”

Constance blinked. She gazed at Leonie while she spoke. “I must persuade them. But it would mean going back without her, first of all.” She turned to Ruby. “I need your help. I can’t do it without you. I can’t leave her with him and I—”

“I’ll do it,” said Ruby, although she had no idea what it was she was being asked to do. All she knew was that she would do it, whatever it was. Because she loved Constance, but mostly because she loved Leonie. And the little mite had no one else.

They worked out what they had to do, what false trails they could set to throw Gregor off. Ruby would get a train to Lincoln, where she would take the tracking device out of her phone and put it on a train heading south. They would dress the same as each other so that when Gregor tried to follow, if he asked anyone whether they had seen either of them, the stories would be confusing. Constance would take Leonie and meet Ruby at Grimsby, where Ruby would take the baby so that Constance could meet her family at the beach.

“So they’ll come for you in a boat, to the beach at Cleethorpes? Why there? Why not the docks at Grimsby?”

Constance’s face twitched slightly before she answered. “That is where they last saw me. They come and look for the lost, every solstice, in the place they were lost. It’s a tradition.”

“They won’t have forgotten you? Or assumed that you’d run away?”

Constance looked stricken. “I hope not. If so, then I’m lost forever.”