Until last night, when he had caught up with her outside the kirk. The dogs were in the byres and she was momentarily alone as Jayne spoke to the minister. He had got a hand to her arm and hissed in her ear, in a single instant bringing back all the horrors of that stormy May night. But she had been prepared this time. She had dug her bait and her plan had worked. It had actually worked.

She stared back at the wild isle as it disappeared from sight, her heart still beating like a frightened bird. But the nightingale was no longer caged.

She was free.

Hands tilting through the afternoon sky. That’s what Effie noticed first as the ship’s progress slowed to a stately glide through the silky sheltered waters. The captain gave a valedictory toot of the horn as they approached the harbour and it sent the crowd waving harder.

The crossing had been long and arduous – ten hours to here – with a heavy Atlantic swell that even the admiralty sloop couldn’t iron flat beneath her broad beam. Some of the islanders had been ill from the heave-ho. A few of the men had chatted with the sailors, but most had lapsed into increasingly pensive silence. Occasionally the cries of a day-old baby escaped from below deck: Mary McKinnon had her child in her arms at last, born last night, a St Kildan for one day.

Now, though, the silence grew trepidatious as the navy men threw thick ropes to the harbourmaster, the St Kildans standing watchful along the decks. For once, the women’s hands, always knitting, were still; the men, always toiling, stood idle; the children, always running, clutched their mothers’ skirts. Palpable disbelief sat upon their faces, not just that they had dared to leave, but also that they had now arrived.

Already, the ease of their new lives announced itself. In Village Bay, disembarking was a treacherous job in all but the calmest conditions, but here, the sloop docked with almost careless nonchalance. From stepping off a boat to eating a meal, their survival would no longer be dictated by the season or the weather but by personal will. It was an extraordinary concept.

Effie’s puffy-eyed gaze moved dully over the gathered, waving mass, seeing how the mainlanders scanned them with rapacious interest, assessing their weather-beaten faces and clothes. The older women here appeared not to wear the red headscarves that were customary back home and she had a feeling of one tribe meeting another. Ma Peg and Mad Annie, who were standing at the prow of the ship, reached down and threw the feather broom tied to a ladder – made by one of the men – into the water. The good-luck tradition seemed to cause a stir among the local crowd and several bright flashes exploded in quick succession.