Leonie looked from one to the other. Her bottom lip had started to stick out. “No shouting,” she said, and a tear escaped from her eye. Both of them rushed toward her. Ruby got there first.

For a second she thought the child would reject her, reach for her mother. But she snuggled there, sucking a thumb, watching Constance with big eyes.

“I’m sorry, baby,” said Ruby. “We won’t shout anymore.”

Constance reached out a hand to rub her daughter’s back. Her arm was shiny with seawater. Sand clung to her elbow and her bare shoulder.

“Aren’t you cold?”

“I’m used to it. I like it.”

Ruby noticed that Constance’s hair was wet. “Surely you didn’t swim from the island?”

She nodded. “It’s the quickest way. It’s not too far.”

“But I didn’t see you coming.”

“I know how to stay hidden.” Constance shifted her eyes toward the sea. “You can’t really see the island from here—look, see that rock just beyond there?”

Ruby looked where she was pointing. There was a rock, quite far out, disappearing behind the edge of the island they stood on. Waves were crashing against it.

“Not that one there? That’s miles out.”

“It’s only part of where we live. I’ll show you, one day.”

“Will I have to swim there?”

Constance smiled.

“Mummy Mummy Mummy,” said Leonie, and Constance took her from Ruby. “Down,” she demanded immediately, so Constance squeezed her, kissed her, set her on her feet, where she squatted down to inspect a small stone.

“You can’t swim back, though, can you?” said Ruby. “Not with Leonie.”

Constance looked at her steadily. “No,” she said. “I can’t.”

“Look, Mummy, look,” said Leonie, holding up a shell for Constance to see.

“Yes, baby, I see. It’s beautiful.”

Constance looked back at Ruby. “I can’t keep her,” she said. And although Ruby expected to see tears glistening on Constance’s cheeks, there were none. “She can’t come home with me. She wasn’t born in the skin. She has to live on the land. With you.”

Born in the skin—that phrase again. Ruby didn’t think it was literal, despite her notion that the sealskin coats might once have been used to catch the newborns. She’d assumed it was an expression meaning “born to the harsh island life.” She glanced again at the sleek sealskin behind Constance, and then over at the rock in the middle of the bay from where the gray seals watched them.

So many questions crowded her mind. “But …”

Both seals called, loud and sharp, a warning bark.

Ruby heard a sound behind her, and she turned. Constance gasped. Ruby’s throat closed.