She looked back at the ship and met Flora’s gaze. A look of concern passed between them, but the camera dishes began popping again as the press men caught sight of her too. Her parents were coming down the ramp now, Flora bringing up the rear and holding the hands of her own little siblings. Immediately, Mhairi was forgotten, her dramatic anguish overshadowed by Flora’s riveting beauty. Her long black hair streamed in the wind like a witch’s skirt, her waist cinched by the red scarf in her signature act of defiance. But if she looked beautiful, for once she didn’t know it. Her lips were pursed together to keep from weeping and her pallor was wan, even on such a bright day as this.

‘Effie, come,’ her father said, half-turning towards her. ‘We’re away.’

Effie looked back to the ship in a panic, still not ready to step away from the only people she had ever known. Norman and Jayne Ferguson were disembarking now. She sneered to see Norman walk with the buoyant stride of a pilgrim arriving in the Promised Land at last. There was blood on his hands but, broad-shouldered and long-legged, his eyes were bright as he addressed the official assigned to them; like Flora, he had been waiting to step into this life for a long time. He had been one of Lorna’s main advocates of the idea to petition the government for evacuation, arguing alongside her that they wouldn’t survive another winter.

‘Effie!’ her father barked.

‘. . . Coming, Father.’ She faltered in his stooped wake as they both followed the bowler-hatted gentleman to one of the glossy cars across the way. It seemed strange that her father should be so sure-footed in this new place, as she – young and strong – stumbled behind, unable to tear her gaze from the passengers remaining on board. She might never see them again – Uncle Hamish and Aunt Mary, her cousins, Mary and Donald McKinnon . . .

‘Your carriage, Mr Gillies, Miss Gillies.’

Effie and her father stared at the vehicle. It was bigger than she had expected, and shinier too, the low sun bouncing off it. What she liked most was that the wheels were so perfectly round. The only round things on Hirta had been the stone querns used for grinding the barley and by comparison, they could only be described as roundish.

A door was opened at the back of the vehicle and for a moment, Effie and her father stared in. The bench where they were to sit was not wooden, as she had supposed, but covered in smooth leather the colour of plums. It had a rich smell she had never encountered before.

‘Ahoy!’

The shout made them both stop and turn. Her Uncle Hamish was waving down from the deck, as much the leader of their ship as he had been back home.