‘Mary, like all children, likes sweets and they are a rare treat. I don’t generally hold with giving young ones such things.’ Mary did not smile, but there was a flicker of something I moulded into pleasure.

Outside, wrapped in our coats, we walked into a gusting wind that blew in the shriek of gulls and the shushing of waves as the swell rose and receded on the beach. The light was brittle and uncertain, as though captured through glass, and I filled my lungs with the sharp air.

‘Well, Mary,’ I said, ‘you must show me all the best places for walking. When I was younger I went fossil hunting with my father. Have you ever done that?’ Mary did not answer and after a time, I too fell quiet, casting her the occasional glance and digesting what I had so lately learned. Our feet crunched on the path.

On the beach, I paused to pick up a shell, pink and coiled like the inside of an ear. Mary stooped too, catching my eye, and together we foraged along the sand. As she crouched, I took the opportunity to observe her. The frock coat she wore came to her knees and below that her legs were long and thin.

I realized how inadequate my expectation had been. It was as if I had believed that I had never been destined to take charge of a real person, but only a doll to be formed to my own needs. In my imagination, I had assumed the task would be within easy reach of my skills, but faced with the real object of my purpose, my confidence was pricked. There hung about her an aura of solitude that touched me. I remembered how I too had retreated after Clara’s death, to a place beyond comforting.

From time to time she glanced at me, a dash of interest in her look, and I studied her eyes, the almond shape that held the brown of her iris. I wondered what she saw when she regarded me and what she felt about my coming. If Hettie had left so quickly, she might not want to trust me for fear that I too might take flight.

After a while, we turned back and took the path that led to the crofts. The valley was hewn into patches of crop hemmed by walls. Highland cattle grazed the higher ground and sheep roamed freely. The village consisted of a row of about fifty cottages strung in an uneven line. The smell of smoke and fish and the faint noise of chatter grew stronger, and two girls came down carrying baskets; somewhere someone sung in Gaelic. Women sat in their doorways as they spun wool and chattered; I walked past them slowly with a good morning. They all wore headscarves of the same woven tweed and regarded me with a mixture of shyness and curiosity. Few answered my greeting.