They followed the police officers outside. The female detective drove off and Perez and Lowrie set off along the beach towards Voxter. Polly wondered what they might be saying to each other and thought again that if anyone was to find Eleanor’s killer, it would be Jimmy Perez. Marcus and Ian wandered back into the house, to their laptops and their phones.

‘You must be desperate to get away,’ Caroline said to Polly as soon as they were alone. ‘You’ve had a dreadful week. I’ve only sat in there for an hour and I feel so claustrophobic I want to scream. Perhaps it’s the hill behind the house that makes this feel so shut in. I always think of Shetland as a place with long views and low horizons. That’s what I love about it, the sense of space, and you don’t really get that here. It’s why I fell for our place in Vidlin – the fact that it’s so light.’

‘I do feel as if I’m going a bit crazy.’ Polly wasn’t sure how much she could say to Caroline, how much she should confide. Caroline wouldn’t imagine girls in white dresses dancing in derelict houses. She was entirely sane.

‘Why don’t we escape for a couple of hours?’ the other woman said. ‘I’d planned to visit the gallery in Yell anyway and it has a nice coffee shop attached. We can have lunch and look at the art. Pretend we’re back in London. Lowrie and I were given a voucher for the place as a wedding present. You can help me choose something for our new home.’

‘Yes,’ Polly said. She felt suddenly lighter, less depressed. For a couple of hours at least she could go back to the time before Eleanor’s death. She and Caroline would look at beautiful things and drink coffee, and the talk would be of selling and buying houses, holidays and office gossip. And when they returned to Unst there would be just one evening to sit through and she could spend that time packing and preparing to go home. Life would be normal once more.

‘Should we ask Grusche to come with us?’ Caroline frowned. ‘Of course there’s no problem if you’d rather it was just the two of us, but she would love it.’

For a moment Polly was hurt. It seemed as if Caroline had already shifted her allegiance to her new family in the islands. Then she thought it would be good to take Grusche with them. If it was just her and Caroline they might end up talking about Eleanor after all. And she liked the older woman, with her sharp wit and laughter, her ability to sum up a character or a situation with a funny expression and a few words. ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Why not?’