Paterson. He was laughing now. It was deep and warm. A couple of village girls blushed and smiled, but every now and then he looked sidelong and fixed on Greer. Did he see it as clearly as I? I recalled Paterson’s words of a few weeks ago when he had suggested other alliances at Iskar – Greer? And Greer’s look now spoke not of some light affection but something that burned hot inside her.

How long had she felt that way? Had it been before Hettie began her affair with him? If so, what must she have thought when her friend – a friend who could so easily have turned the eye of any man on the island – began her relationship with him? And had Hettie known of Greer’s infatuation before embarking on the liaison? If that had occurred, would Greer have still loved Hettie at the end? How must she have felt if the man she loved was under the spell of her beautiful friend? I let out my breath. Perhaps I was allowing my imagination to roam too liberally. The only thing in the matter that I knew for certain was that Greer had given her heart to Paterson.

It was a relief to take Mary to her bed later. At her dressing table, I caught a glimpse of myself – bruises blooming and behind that the force of my fear – and I barely recognized myself. I could not bear the thought of the coming night and even then, although I tried to deny it, somewhere in a distant room, a faint whistle seemed to shiver in the air. Mary was restless and seemed reluctant to settle. Twice, she put her hand on my arm and opened her mouth. Finally, as I tidied away, she pressed a piece of paper into my hands and I felt a sigh of impatience. I did not have room to consider her needs; my own were too pressing.

‘Please don’t leave me, Elspeth,’ she had written. I bent and kissed her and saw how my refusal to engage made her withdraw. But I did not have the resources left to attend to anything other than my own anxiety and all I could do was reassure her, once again, that I would not abandon her; that I had no intention of leaving Skelthsea. I turned at the door to wish her a final goodnight and she regarded me sadly, not even mustering a smile.

I could not settle and worked myself up into a frenzy of apprehension. My thoughts became muddled; I thought I heard the murmured voice of the doctor outside my room in Circus Gardens, the tapping of the ivy. The wild, unfettered rush and retreat of emotion battered me.

In the candlelight the room shivered and I thought with sickness of Hettie’s lullaby and how it had become a thing of such dread.