Orkney rarely faced ice and snow. Wind was its main winter enemy and yet on that particular night her parents’ car had hit black ice coming home from Kirkwall, which had taken them into the path of a lorry.

According to the police, their deaths had been instant, so no chance for either Ava or her teenage brother, Dougie, to say goodbye. Dougie had called her in London, his voice breaking, and of course she’d caught the first plane north to Inverness, then across to Kirkwall.

Escaping the busy city to alight in Kirkwall had always been such a pleasurable experience until that day. In fact, Ava doubted whether it would ever be pleasurable again.

Much as she loved Orkney, she had chosen not to live and work there after graduation. She’d pursued her dream of becoming an investigative journalist and succeeded. Although based in London, her work took her all over the world, sometimes into scary and threatening situations. It didn’t stop her loving it.

Coming back here to run the family farm seemed much more daunting and, frankly, much less enjoyable. That thought alone was torturing her. Then there was Dougie to consider. Only seventeen, he was in no position to run the farm on his own, no matter how much he wanted to.

For Dougie, grief at the death of his beloved parents had now been replaced by anger that his sister should even contemplate selling the farm, his birthright, instead of staying here to run it with him.

Her troubled thoughts beat at her, much like the buffeting wind, as she made her way to the byre. Straight ahead she could see the boathouse, where no doubt Dougie had gone to nurse his wrath after their latest confrontation, brought on by the storm. She had lost her cool, pointing out to him how unprepared they were to deal with both the finances of the farm and the physical work it required. Plus how was she going to earn a living here, doing what she did?

Thinking about the words she’d uttered in the midst of the storm, panicked as she had been, she knew they were still inexcusable. Dougie had had every right to take refuge with his beloved dog, Finn, and his boat, the Fear Not.

Dougie was fearless in a way that only the young can be. Hence the name of the boat he’d learned to sail on Scapa Flow as soon as their parents had permitted it. John Rae, the intrepid Victorian Orcadian adventurer, had always been his idol and it had been sailing Scapa Flow where the explorer had tested himself as a young man, before he’d set sail for Canada as a ship’s surgeon.