Leonie was sleeping, her chest gently rising and falling in the light from the bathroom door. Ruby had an idea that she might just slip out, leave the comb where Constance had said to, and be back before the toddler awoke, but almost as soon as the thought had surfaced, she dismissed it. Leonie was coming with her, of course she was. It was unthinkable that the child would wake up alone and think she’d been abandoned again. By the time Ruby had dressed herself, the little girl was rubbing her eyes and sitting up.

They made their way to the front door of the hotel, avoiding the restaurant, where the smell of breakfast wafted tantalizingly toward them.

“I mungry, Mamma Bee,” said Leonie as the door swung closed, and Ruby began walking fast along the coast road, heading north, with the child strapped to her back.

“We’ll eat soon, baby,” she said over her shoulder. “Just got to do one thing. Then it’s brekky, okay?”

“Yay! Brekky.”

As she hiked around a corner, the landscape rolled out in front of them, and she almost had to stop to get her breath. Even in the weak, predawn light, with the freezing wind whipping her face, the harsh beauty of it floored her. The road was cut into the rock, which stretched craggily down to meet the sea, that heaving, blue-black, infinite thing. The island curved to one side, with coves and crevasses breaking up the flat edges of the machair, falling away to beaches with sand that shone white, as if they held the light inside them for times such as these.

Ruby pressed on, shushing Leonie as she complained of being cold, heading for the outcrop that Constance had described, the barren, exposed peninsula with a single, half-derelict cottage on it. It was further away than it looked at first. Leonie started to moan softly and wriggled against the scarves that Ruby had used to wrap and secure her on her back.

“Just a few more minutes, baby. Don’t worry. Nearly there.”