At the hotel, Joanna watched Leonie carefully for signs of distress, but all she saw was a sunny, happy girl, playing with Ruby, whom she adored. Mamma Bee. They seemed so happy together, so natural. The bond was obvious.

“What’s wrong, Joanna?” asked Ruby. “You seem troubled. Not like you.”

“Oh, nothing. Just tired.”

How could she tell Ruby that in a matter of hours, Leonie would be taken away, perhaps forever? That safeguarding systems and Social Services would be even now deciding what was best for the child, and while they did that, they would almost definitely take her into local authority care? Unless someone could find living family members to take her.

“I need to see if I can find the family, this Roane lot,” she said, and headed out once more.

Jo went door to door. At every house, the same response: folded arms, closed faces. As the short time she had started running out, she became more desperate.

“There’s a community on an island nearby. You haven’t heard of it? What about the name Roane? Mean anything to you?” Each person feigned an unconvincing denial. One man said, “Oh, you mean the selkies?” but his wife dragged him away before he could say any more. At the Castlebay Hotel, a strange expression crossed the face of the woman who ran it. Her words declared that she’d never heard of the secretive clan; her face and body language said the opposite.

Jo returned to the beach just as the helicopter landed, come to pick up Ruby, Leonie, and her. As the island drifted out of sight, Jo looked at the little girl—excited to be so high up, her head too small for her ear defenders—and felt sad that if it was true her mother was from here, this might be her only visit. Whatever her family setup looked like after this, Leonie would be changed by it, like the roots of a sapling encountering a rock, and growing differently forever after. But maybe that was just life; maybe that’s how we all grow.

EPILOGUE

Three Months Later

Joanna

THE TWO BODIES in the wall of the penthouse apartment were eventually proved to be that of Gregor Christopher Franks, a local property developer, and his elderly mother, Eva. Forensic examination of the bodies suggested they had been killed at around the same time as each other and sealed in the wall for at least three years. The murderer had gone to great lengths to make sure they didn’t rot, using salting processes that the pathologist described as “more usually applied to the making of serrano ham.”