‘See if you can sleep,’ she said and pulled the covers up around me, tucking them in almost as a mother would. The gesture touched me nearly to tears. My thoughts returned again and again to the morning. Had Mary believed that she had seen William? Had it been an island child and perhaps Mary missed her own brother so much that she conceived his face from another’s? I recalled those early days when I was convinced I saw Clara everywhere – on a crowded street, or the back of her head a few pews in front at church, and it was only when I looked closer that I realized it had not been her at all.

I remembered the sound of the feet at Gulls Cry, their weight and tempo – whoever it was had not been adult; the steps I heard were those of a child.

The drink was hot and bitter and I slept for several hours, waking to sparrows on the sill. My dreams had been embedded with fear and the image of William’s body upon the rocks in a ring of pebbles.

Getting up, I made my way out of the room. The corridor was hushed. Shadows fell from the attic and pooled on the threadbare rugs. I listened to the dull creak of the eaves. Beside me was the door to William’s wing and for an instant I thought of his palm upon the handle, a monstrous token of the day’s work in his pocket and a whistle on his lips.

Instead of making my way immediately to the drawing room, some compulsion had me take to the attic where threads of icy air spun in the atmosphere. I was aware of my human weight on the treads, their reassuring firmness, the way my heart beat inside my living chest. The mind, my father had always taught me, was the most unreliable of man’s organs. Hearts could fail, kidneys could grow septic, but the brain was capable of further reaches; we trust what we see and hear, but how do we truly justify the conclusions we reach?

Hettie’s room was cool on my skin. I pulled the curtains open, flinging a pale light across the fittings and furnishings. It was silent but for wind and sea. No engine rattling the boards, no figure standing in the corner. It was empty. I had a sudden image of Hettie far away under the American sun, swinging her hips with a child on each hand, a secret smile about her face. The way the children would cling to her, unknowing of how close their enemies were. Wherever she was, she was ignorant of the fact that not weeks after she stepped on to the boat William lay dead at the foot of Stack Mor, rendering his sister dumb.