‘Hold it,’ I said, ‘and catch me.’ And we were running along the strand like two children; I could feel the laugh in my throat at her shocked expression. She tugged at her toy and tried to catch the wind in the kite’s sails, but it dipped and rose with a whim.

‘It’s like a mad thing,’ I shouted, and she made a sound like a chuckle.

She took off again and I ran beside her, and finally, it caught an updraught and soared into the sky where a parting in the clouds revealed honeyed rays of sunlight.

‘Keep it up.’ And I helped her with the twine, our fingers touching as we lifted our heads to where it flew above us, brushing the heavens like a sign. No words were needed, but between us the joy of success and of the glittering ocean was shared.

As we returned, she kept her distance, hopping towards the shore then drawing back as the tide grew close. Now and then she looked at me and then she began to run back and forth along the bay, stopping to examine the ground, and as I watched, I saw that her lips moved as if in speech. I paused and listened but the noise of the waves drowned all else. I wondered what it was she said. Did she practise the sound of her tongue or was she lost in some narrative inside her imagination as children were so often wont to do?

Eventually she caught up to walk beside me. The hem of her skirt was damp and her boots showed a white line where she had been caught by the sea. I tried to read her face but she had her head down and all that I could see was the bobbing of the yellow tassel on her hat.

A wave came up nearly to our feet and I jumped to avoid it, but for a moment, beside my own reflection, there were not one but two small shadows upon the water. I blinked, looked again, but the wave had retreated leaving only the skin of wet sand. Surely a trick of the light? Yet there remained upon my memory the conviction that the shadow figures had not been the same and that one had been thinner and taller.

The ship was docking and Mary and I waited with the others to watch the passengers disembark. Reid Paterson leaned against the sea wall and gave me a slow smile. Beside him, his wife hunched her shoulders into a shawl and kept her head down.