On the bed Polly laid out the bridesmaid’s dress she’d worn to the hamefarin’, folded it carefully and put it in the suitcase. She supposed that Eleanor’s dress would be kept as evidence, and in the end it would be destroyed. She looked out of the window. It was early evening and the fog was drifting in from the water again, blurring the horizon so that it was impossible to see where the sky ended and the sea began. In the room next door she heard the men’s voices. Marcus was being a saint. He hardly knew Ian, but he was supporting him, calming him, allowing him to talk. Allowing him to drink and to rant. Polly took a shirt from the wardrobe and folded that too.

She’d almost finished when Caroline and Lowrie arrived. She heard the door and their voices, wonderfully normal, and her mood lifted. The following day at this time she’d be on the boat south. Then she and Marcus would be alone in their own car for the drive to London. They could forget about Ian and dead people. Eleanor would have left Shetland without a second thought, in their situation. Polly had a tendency to be too introspective, and shutting herself away in her room wasn’t helping. She opened the door and went out to greet her friends.

They were dressed almost as if it was winter, in anoraks and boots, and Lowrie carried a rucksack that clunked with bottles when he set it on the floor.

‘You can’t spend your last night in Shetland tucked away in here brooding,’ Caroline said. Classic Caroline, prefect and social worker rolled into one. ‘We’ve got a plan.’

It seemed that a friend of Lowrie’s was a chef and he’d come across from Lerwick to set up a pop-up restaurant for the night in the boat club, in a settlement just down the coast. ‘A couple of miles’ walk to get us hungry,’ Caroline said. ‘Then great Shetland food, some good wine, and we’ll roll back before it gets too late. What do you think?’

Polly thought that whatever they made of the plan, the rest of them would go along with it. Caroline in this mood was unstoppable. And although they teased her for being bossy, actually they were usually glad to have someone to make decisions for them. Without her they would dither and nothing would get done.

And it seemed that Ian was up for an evening away from the house, was even the most enthusiastic of them. They put on their outdoor clothes and set out on the walk. The path took them past the spot where Eleanor’s body had been found, but nobody mentioned it. We’re so selfish, Polly thought. We care more about our own psyches than we do about our dead friend. We do what we must to survive intact.