A loud wail from the deck made everyone startle and look back. Mhairi had collapsed to the ground, sobbing pitifully. She was clutching a bow rail and tossing her beautiful red mane like it was a dancing flame. ‘I canna, I canna!’ she cried frantically, looking up at her neighbours, her hand reaching blindly towards them for help. ‘Don’t make me! Please don’t make me—’

Effie frowned as a murmur rippled through the titillated crowd. Was hysteria what they had come for, then? Hoped for? She could feel the weight of their scrutiny, had a sense of awaiting judgement from the welcoming party.

Mhairi’s mother, with six other children to herd including an eighteen-month-old toddler, shot a single look to her husband.

‘Father! Leave me be!’ Mhairi cried as, without a word, Ian McKinnon hoisted her to her feet again and escorted her, weeping, off the ship in a thin-lipped display of dignity. Effie could see the whiteness of his fingertips against Mhairi’s arm, the only visible sign of his anger as his daughter’s legs kept buckling, her head hanging down heavily as she staggered, sobbing pitifully.

‘No! No! No!’ she wept.

For one fleeting moment, the crying girl glanced up, as if noticing for the first time the many faces of strangers turned towards her, as if she alone on the boat hadn’t been looking to shore. Her reddened eyes had a bleak look that bordered on utter capitulation.

Effie wanted to run to her friend – Mhairi had never been strong-willed, like her and Flora – but the family was corralled by another of the government officials stepping forward and thoughtfully herding them away from the spectators and press men, who seemed more excited than ever. Mhairi’s little brothers, oblivious to their sister’s distress, gave whoops of delight as they slipped their hands from their mother’s and bolted towards the shiny black cars parked in a row alongside the pier. They had all heard of cars, of course, but to finally see one . . .

‘Alasdair! Murran!’ Effie heard their mother yell as she ducked after them. The crowd seemed pleased by the commotion, moving as one to watch the action, so that within moments Effie had lost sight of the family. Her friends. Her neighbours. Just like that they were gone.

A frisson of fear juddered through her own heart, the way it did when she missed a toehold on the sea cliffs or was startled by a ground-nesting bird. She knew the McKinnons were being housed near to her and her father, that they would remain neighbours – but what did ‘near’ mean over here? Were they two cottages apart, or two miles?