‘You think it’s a girl,’ Anna says.

‘Oh I know so.’

When Yolente smiles, Anna senses the woman’s youth peering through the wrinkled creases like a dusty painting restored to its former glory.

‘God said so. He also told me you must stay here until she is born. He intended for us to meet, perhaps not in such dramatic circumstances. But His ways are mysterious to everyone but Him. I will fetch you something to eat. Sit and rest and let your soul be at ease.’

Anna obeys the old woman’s directives. She closes her eyes and allows sleep to carry her away. When Yolente returns later, carrying a bowl of warm barley groats sweetened with softened apple, she tells Anna that she is the last of the nuns who swore to care for the island’s orphans, the ones nobody wanted or could afford to take in.

‘We were once so many and now it’s only me left,’ she says. ‘All my sisters have gone to God. Now they are living in Paradise. I would like to join them but there are the children to think of. Who will look after them once I pass? I have been praying for God to send me an answer. To give me a sign. And he has sent me you. You have no family, nothing and no one to return to. Here on Texel, you can be anything. You can take another name, if you desire, as I did. Before I was Yolente, I was a broken woman, living in sin with a married man who beat me every night. I ran away, hid myself on a ship destined for the east. But something, some calling, drew me off the boat before it could set sail. And I found my way here. I will help you raise your daughter, when she is born. She will thrive in the company of the other children, she will be safe and happy even without a father’s care.’

Later, when Yolente has shuffled from the room again, Anna thinks about her offer. Touching her stomach, she wonders how the woman knows so much. Perhaps in her delusion she let things slip. Or perhaps God does speak to Yolente. Who is Anna to say? Perhaps fate intended her to end up here all along.

Six months later, after a short but violent labour in which she felt she would be torn apart, Anna is holding her daughter at last, and dawn has broken in the sky outside the window. The terrible storm that snatched Blanche’s life and those of a hundred sailors whose names she will never know is but a distant memory, and she realises that her choice to stay on Texel was the right one.