‘Of course I believe you.’ Polly wanted to show her support for Eleanor, to stop her talking about children and embarrassing herself. She paused. ‘I probably saw her myself this evening, when I left the hall to catch my breath just after supper. She was playing out on the beach. I don’t think she was a ghost, though. Just a local child dressed up for the party, and this afternoon she probably ran home up the track.’ Polly didn’t say that the girl she’d seen during the hamefarin’ had also disappeared while she was looking away. That would have encouraged Eleanor in her fancies, and she wanted her friend back too. The closeness they’d had. The laughs and the silliness.

She stood up and carried the glasses into the house. The men followed. She wondered what Marcus was making of all this. He was Polly’s new man – newish at least – and she was still amazed that they were a couple. She felt like a giddy teenager when she thought about him. He’d agreed to the party immediately when she’d tentatively asked if he fancied it. ‘Shetland in midsummer? Of course.’ With the huge schoolboy grin that had attracted her in the first place. ‘And if we’re going north, where better than to go to Unst, the furthest north it’s possible to be and still be in the UK.’ For him, it seemed, life was nothing but new experiences.

Through the kitchen window Polly saw that Eleanor was still sitting outside. The mist had slid as far as the house now and the image was blurred. It was as if Eleanor was made of ice and was slowly melting. Polly went to the door and shouted out to her.

‘Come in, lovely. You’ll catch your death.’

Eleanor waved. ‘Give me a few minutes. I’ll be there very soon.’ She blew out the candle.

Turning to go to her room, Polly thought she caught sight of a white figure dancing along the tideline.

Chapter Three

Jimmy Perez walked Cassie down the hill to Ravenswick School. Some days he let her go by herself, but then he watched from the house, picking out the red Fair Isle bonnet knitted by his mother and worn by Cassie whatever the weather, until it disappeared inside. His paranoia was the result of guilt and the fact that Cassie wasn’t his child. He’d been charged to care for her and he felt the duty like an honour and a burden.

He was on late shift, so he walked slowly back to the converted chapel that had once been Fran’s home, and thought again that he should do something with his house in Lerwick. He wasn’t sure that he could bring himself to sell it, and besides he had it in his head that it would provide some sort of security for Cassie if anything should happen to him. Her natural father always seemed to have money, but Perez thought he was feckless. The Lerwick house would see Cassie through university perhaps or give her the deposit for her first home. Properties in town fetched more than those in the country. But it seemed criminal that it should be lying empty when folk needed places to stay and, with nobody living there, it would soon get damp. He decided to call into an estate agency in the street before he started work, to see about getting it rented out. When Fran had died the year before, small tasks like that had seemed insurmountable and he felt a stab of pride that he could consider dealing with the business now.