“Tilly?”

Leisurely, Tilly pulled her gaze from the television. “Mmm?” she asked nonchalantly.

Kate fixed her with a deadpan glare. She stood. “Can you help me grab some more wood?”

“I don’t think we need any more wood.” Avoiding Kate’s gaze, she reached for her teacup on the edge of the coffee table.

“It’s about to go out and you know you like to wake up to a warm house.”

“If you tell me where it is, I can get it,” Jim offered.

“No need, thanks Jim.” Smiling tersely, she took the cup from Tilly’s hands and returned it to the coffee table. “Til?”

Torch in hand, she followed Tilly out the front door of the cottage and pulled it shut behind her. “Are you crazy?” she hissed. “Have you lost your damn mind?”

“Okay, I had a feeling that you’d react like this—”

“Of course I would!” She stormed down the garden path to the wood shelter at the edge of the bush, Tilly close at her slippers. “I can’t believe you’ve brought a stranger here to sleep in our home.”

Behind her, Tilly spluttered a noise somewhere between a gasp and a scoff. “You think I was just going to get off the ferry at Lords and wave him goodbye? Let him go on and sleep under the dock on East Island? He’s almost completely deaf, Kate, what was I supposed to do?”

“Give him a twenty, I don’t know. This,” she jabbed her pointer finger back toward the cottage, “is not normal.”

Tilly rolled her eyes. “I did it all the time in the city.”

Kate halted before the tiny, poorly constructed wood shelter. When she’d lived alone? “Are you fucking serious?” Her stomach dropped. “You invited strangers into your house when you lived alone?”

“I had roommates for a while, don’t get your knickers in a twist! You’re here. It’s safe.”

“It’s not safe!” The frame of the shelter creaked loudly as Kate planted a hand on the rusty, corrugated-iron roof. “Do you know how long it would take the cops to get across the causeway if something happened?”

Tilly sighed. “Kate, he’s seventy-nine and he says he has severe plantar fasciitis. His feet are so painful that it took us almost forty minutes to walk from the pier to the cottage—he can barely move. He isn’t going to do anything unsavoury.”

Shaking her head, Kate placed the torch on the barrel of wood and dragged her hands over her face. “Thank God the girls aren’t here on weekends.”

“I wouldn’t have invited him if the girls were here. Honestly, you’re being overly dramatic.” Tilly’s breath was visible in the torchlight. “It’s very offensive to assume that just because he’s homeless he’s inclined to rob us, or to be violent—”

“Are you kidding me?” Kate snapped. She squinted into the darkness of the barrel, hoping that her voice would have scared off any snakes taking residence inside. “It’s not that he’s bloody homeless. I couldn’t give a toss if he lived in Windsor fucking Castle. We don’t know him.” Suddenly, realisation struck her. She pulled her hands away. “Your bedroom door doesn’t have a lock.” How could she possibly sleep knowing that only a door separated Tilly and the complete stranger sleeping on their lounge? “You can’t stay in the cottage tonight,” she said firmly. “You’re sleeping in the convent.”