‘So soon?’ Uncle Hamish asked, sounding shocked – he wasn’t a man easily surprised. ‘But the letter’s barely left us!’

‘It appears things have moved quickly. It’s been debated in parliament and our plight discussed—’

No one spoke, the air becoming as frigid as ice as they awaited her next words.

‘. . . And they’ve agreed to our request! We’re to be evacuated to the mainland!’

A shocked cry rang out, the women gasping, their hands rushing to their mouths. They looked to their husbands, their children, their brothers and sisters, their neighbours as the enormity of the news settled – after over two thousand years of continuous human settlement, their days on the wild isle were now numbered. Several of the men stared at the ground, Effie’s father included. Mad Annie and Ma Peg reached for each other’s hands in rare silence. Some of the children had gone back to their games of cartwheels and playing leapfrog, already bored.

‘When?’ someone asked breathlessly.

‘Where will we go?’ asked another.

‘Are they keeping us together?’

‘What about jobs?’

‘Everyone, please,’ the minister said, raising his voice above the rabble. ‘Let Miss MacDonald continue speaking. We have many questions but she will have only some of the answers at this stage.’

Lorna nodded her thanks to him. ‘It says only that we will be evacuated by the end of the summer, just as soon as new homes and jobs have been found. Every effort will be made to keep us together but no guarantees can be given. Further details will follow in due course but we are to start making our preparations now for a wholesale removal at the end of August, before the weather turns.’

Effie’s heart was pounding in her chest. Could this really be true? They were leaving here?

She looked around to find Sholto staring at her. She was leaving here.

She was coming to live on the mainland, on his side of the water. The island life she knew here – cragging, fowling, knitting and spinning – was going to be left behind. She would live in a different house in a different place and have a job. She blinked back at him, the two of them locked in a private world . . . If she lived differently, in a different place, would she be different too? Different enough to be good enough? For him?

The villagers were beginning to disperse already. People needed to absorb the news. They needed to go away and think upon the consequences of being granted what they had asked for. The old way was already dying. Rachel McKinnon and Effie’s aunt, Mary Gillies, were crying into their handkerchiefs, the men walking with deeply etched frowns back to the beach to fetch the sacks of wool to take to the featherstore. The group on the Street became smaller, contracting into a tighter unit, Sholto edging slowly ever closer to her.

‘Does Mary know?’ Archie MacQueen asked.