‘You’ll help her, won’t you?’ she said quietly to her gathered friends. ‘I mean, obviously I know you will, it’s only that I hate the thought of not being here to do it myself…’

Rhona glanced at the others. ‘Sounds as if you’ve made up your mind to leave, hen,’ she said.

Anna stared into her glass of lime and soda. ‘Realistically, I don’t know what else I can do.’

There was a pause. Rhona raised an eyebrow at Phil. Susan nudged him. Terry nodded. Marie shrugged.

‘What?’ Anna asked. ‘What’s going on?’

Phil looked over his shoulder to where Pat was talking to another knot of people, then back at Anna. ‘Excuse me for a moment.’ He extricated himself from their circle and went over to Pat, apologizing for the interruption and then speaking a few words in Pat’s ear. Pat looked over at Anna and nodded. As they came towards her, Anna felt a terrible feeling of misgiving.

‘Can I talk to you for a moment, love?’ she asked. ‘Outside. I could do with a bit of air, to tell you the truth.’

Anna looked at the others, who offered smiles and nods as she followed Pat outside. Together the two women walked down the Strait Path that led from the pub to Gamrie’s shore. The tide was out again, the sun was warm, and there were families with small children playing among the rockpools. Across the bay they could see Crovie’s battered shoreline. The weather was lifting, no more storms forecast for the immediate future, and a low light was breaking up the cloud, pale sunbeams casting God-light over the damaged houses. From this distance it looked like a toy town, carelessly dropped from the pocket of a passing toddler.

Pat settled herself on the old stone wall. Anna perched next to Pat and felt, not for the first time, that her belly was beginning to swell into a proper pregnancy bump. She laid a hand there, and Pat smiled.

‘You’re really beginning to show.’

‘I know,’ Anna laughed. ‘At least I have more than one excuse to buy a whole new wardrobe.’

Pat smiled again and looked out to sea. ‘Poor Frank. He was so excited about the baby, you know. Could hardly talk about anything else.’

‘Oh, Pat—’

Pat reached over to take Anna’s hand. ‘Don’t fret, love,’ she said softly. ‘You’ll start me off, and that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about. Now, before I begin, it’s important to know that there’s no reason for you to feel pressured. It’s likely that we would have thought of doing something of the sort whether or not you’d been here, given what the storm’s done to the village.’

Anna shifted on the stone, uncomfortable and anxious. ‘What are you talking about, Pat? Do what?’