There was a small silence as the indignation in her words was received, and sidelong smirks were passed around the table.

‘Indeed. Although I understand you had never seen your own reflection before this afternoon?’ Mr Graves replied.

Effie shot a look back at the housekeeper, who at least had the decency to avert her eyes. Another titter rippled around the room, but this time no one was told to keep quiet.

‘The mirror was a novelty, I admit,’ Effie said quietly, with as much dignity as she could muster. ‘As were the stairs. And electricity. I am coming across things I previously only read about in books.’

‘You can read?’ Jenny asked, sounding genuinely surprised.

‘Is it true there are no trees over there?’ asked William to her right.

‘Quite true.’

‘So you’ve never eaten an apple or pear?’

‘An apple, yes; but not a pear . . . Not yet.’

The timid maid looked on with a look of curiosity and pity. ‘What did you do for shade?’

‘Shade?’

‘On a hot day. Here, we sit under a tree if it’s too warm outside.’

Effie thought for a moment. She’d never considered the lack of shade before. ‘We have the stone walls that throw down shadows, or we’d sit in the cleits. If it was really too much to bear, we’d go down to the water.’

‘I heard a funny thing,’ another man said, everyone growing bolder now as her novelty value cast off inhibitions. ‘That you’re an island community, yet none can swim.’

‘Aye, that was largely true,’ she nodded, seeing the ridicule in his eyes. ‘Often the water’s too heavy for fishing or swimming. Although I can swim now and I’d started to teach the bairns before the evacuation. If we’d stayed, we would all have learnt. I’d have seen to it myself.’

‘How did you suddenly learn to swim?’ Mr Graves asked, with what she could see was his customary scepticism.

‘Sholto taught me,’ she shrugged.

Every set of eyes around the table widened.

‘. . . What?’ she asked, seeing their incredulousness.

No one replied, but she caught the looks that sped like pond-skaters between the staff, and she understood that somehow she had confounded them all.

‘His lordship taught you to swim?’ Mr Graves clarified.

Hadn’t she just said that? ‘Yes. In return for showing him and his father how to climb and set snares.’

‘So you are an . . . expert on those things?’ Mr Graves couldn’t have looked more disbelieving if she had said she was the prime minister.

‘I wouldn’t have said so, particularly, but the earl seemed to value my opinion on them.’

‘Would that explain, then . . . the clothes?’