The reaction is so unexpected that I don’t know what to do next – steely is my neutral state and I hope that’s how I look now. ‘Who told you?’ I ask. Based on the sort of casual misogyny which seemed to come easily to Frank, I decide he probably wouldn’t have confided in her. So who else – Booker? Sylvia? Ellis?

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she snaps. ‘What matters is you are a guest here, on this island, and guests keep their noses out of business that doesn’t concern them.’

‘Maybe it should concern me.’

‘Tell you what, I didn’t buy the whole Seasonal programme in the first place and we don’t really need you here. Understand? I complain long and loud enough and they’ll boot your ass to the mainland quicker than you can beg. Not just fired. I can do that. I can make that happen.’

I narrow my eyes. She’s trying to scare me. ‘I could stay with Ellis.’

Mary Anne scoffs. ‘You think Sylvia is happy about any of this, either? You think she wants this anywhere near her Ellis?’ She crushes her cigarette into the asphalt under her booted foot. ‘You leave him out of this. He’s a good kid and good kids don’t belong anywhere near dangerous business.’

‘It’s his business. As much as anyone’s. More than anyone’s. And why is it dangerous?’

Mary Anne stares.

‘Because of someone?’ I ask. ‘You?’

And she’s really angry now, moving towards me when I haven’t dared move a muscle this whole time; if I stand still enough I can grow roots in the ground and won’t be knocked. I dare you, I want to say. But I lose my nerve when I see how her eyes are flaring; I know nothing about her but in this moment I learn everything I need to know to make a start. ‘Because of everyone, honey. Because we’ve been trying to forget this hurt and it’s taken decades but we’ve done it, and people here are gonna choke on the dust you’re riling up. Selfish only to think about danger to yourself; it’s danger to us. Folk’ll get hurt.’

I smear a bead of sweat from my ear. ‘It sounds like someone’s gonna hurt me.’

‘I will myself, if you don’t leave these good people alone.’

‘What if they’re not all good?’

‘You think you can come here, not knowing no one or nothing, and decide after a day or two that some of us that have been sticking together for thirty-odd years are not all good?’ Mary Anne says, stumbling a little over her words. ‘You don’t know anything about what’s gone on here. What matters to us. Insulting, really.’ Then says again, as if reaffirming to herself, ‘It’s insulting, that’s what it is.’

‘I want to understand.’