‘I can’t help thinking it’ll be too much work for people who are beyond such things,’ Anna said. ‘Pat was already slowing down, and losing Frank has knocked her for six. Terry and Susan are going to struggle themselves. The others – Phil and Marie, David and Glynn – they don’t live there permanently. I can’t help thinking that they’ll all cut their losses and go somewhere else. Here maybe, in Gardenstown. That’d be so much easier, wouldn’t it?’

He nodded. ‘If ever there were a time to move on, this would be it.’

Silence sank into the room, and along with it a truth that neither of them voiced. Anna reached for his hand. Robert took it with both of his, frowning at the tangle of their fingers. Something had changed between them in the days that she and Pat had been staying at the MacKenzie house. No, Anna thought then, not changed – deepened. It remained unsaid, though, sketched only in moments like this, when one or both of them could have said something, but somehow never did.

‘You have to do what’s right for you,’ Robert said. ‘What’s right for the baby. I understand that.’

Anna took a shallow breath. ‘Living in a ruined village that has no access apart from by sea… Even if the Fishergirl’s Luck is completely untouched, even if—’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘I know.’

She shook her head, dumbly, unable to speak. In that moment she wanted him to lean over the table and kiss her, but he didn’t. She could have done the same and kissed him, but Anna didn’t do that, either. Where was the wisdom in starting something when she may have to leave this place, and soon? How ironic that she had spent her first days in the village desperate to leave, and these last ones desperate to stay.

‘I’ll take you there once the weather’s set fair,’ Robert MacKenzie said, in a voice that was barely loud enough for her to hear. ‘Anyone who wants to go. We’ll take the Cassie’s Joy. When the weather’s calm enough.’

The moment was broken, and Anna gently drew back her hand from between his. He let her go and stood up to take her empty mug from the table, keeping his back to her as he put it into the sink. Anna’s eye was drawn to the photograph of Cassie, still in place on the fridge, and with a sudden flash of clarity knew that there was a future, somewhere, where another photograph could join it, a photograph which would contain her and the baby inside her that was growing larger with every passing day. She stood up and said goodnight while he still had his back turned, escaping while she still had the strength to leave.