She closed it gently, tenderly, as though closing a door on a wondrous sight. Hugging it to her, she leant back against the wall and stared out through the window. She had never owned anything so precious before and she felt . . . unworthy of it. A book like this had no place here, literally – not even a shelf to sit on. If she was to keep it, it would have to be hidden under her mattress along with all the others, keeping its beauty and workmanship hidden, and that felt . . . wrong. This book belonged to a better life than hers.

She stared out sightlessly, trying to imagine who she needed to be to warrant it. A girl with silk dresses and a house full of literature? Of art? Music drifting from windows and songbirds singing in trees . . .? Not the girl dressed in boy’s tweeds. Not the girl for whom birds were not just beauty, but food. Who slipped snares round their necks as they sat in their burrows. Who swung from ropes with one hand and wrung their necks with the other. This book belonged to a life she would never know. One that couldn’t be lived here, on a rock in the ocean. For the first time in her life, she felt a flicker of resentment towards her home.

The sea was slumbering, occasional sighs rising and falling, and she watched a seal swimming near the shore, its dark head rising and dipping below the surface.

She watched it disappear below the waves, then rise again in a rhythm.

Wait . . .

It was no seal. An arm, two arms, emerged, cutting through the water like blades. A man was out there and he was swimming the width of the bay. She sat straighter. A midnight swimmer on an island of landlubbers? There was only one person it could be, of course. No one here could navigate water like that.

She watched, transfixed. She had never seen someone swim before. Some of the men, when they’d toppled off the boat, acquired a strange frantic paddling motion, much like the dogs’, which was passable till they could grab on again. But this was nothing like that. His body was synchronized and streamlined. He moved like silk.

Her own swimming lesson – after the brief attempt at floating, and the water fight – had ended with a sprint back to the beach (which she won) to warm up again. They hadn’t come close to anything like this.

She watched as he ploughed back towards the mid-point of the bay and stood. He tipped his head back, wetting his hair again before shaking it out and combing it back with his fingers. His body was an inky silhouette but its line she already knew well. She had traced it from his very first hours here.

He began wading in, heading towards the beach.