A tense silence met his words and from the looks they cast each other, I got the impression the divers were unhappy. Perhaps they didn’t trust the government to help them; after all, Bram had told me they’d spent years reporting shipwrecks that potentially contained a swathe of treasures to the authorities, only to be politely told their information was of no interest. In the end, though, they accepted Rob’s terms, leaving Liam and me to discuss the transfer of the dress and the artefacts.

Rob had happily accepted our offer to undertake analysis of the dress, since we were already on the ground and could quickly arrange for the lab-work and conservation work to begin. Liam and I planned to pool our collective research together – he would perform the chemical analysis while I would investigate the dress’s origins. We had given each other a tentative time frame of three weeks to consolidate our initial findings for a long-form essay we planned to pitch to a number of academic and literary journals. I already had a few publications in mind – the cultural editor of The New Yorker was an old friend – but Liam liked the idea of auctioning our story off to the highest bidder.

‘It’s the best option, a way of controlling the narrative. If we don’t strike now while we have the power, word will get out and then every journalist will descend on the island hoping to get the inside scoop. All our offers will dry up.’

He went on to assure me that the Glasgow School of Art was happy to back his research. A hugely successful discovery like this could restore the vice-chancellor’s broken trust.

‘And you’ll finally be able to finish your book. Don’t you feel like you’ve just been writing with no end point? Maybe this dress is the destination, Jo. The thing you’ve been waiting for.’