‘Well.’ The woman settled back in her chair as if she were about to tell a bedtime story to a child. ‘It was a misty sort of day much like this, but a bit earlier in the year. February and late afternoon, so it was already getting a bit dark. I work as a classroom assistant in the school in Meoness, only I’m on maternity leave just now, and I was on my way home. Then there she was on the track in front of me. A girl of about ten, all dressed in white. Kind of old-fashioned, you know, with white ribbons in her hair. And she danced. Like she was performing just for me. Like it was a sort of sign. Then she disappeared into the fog. I shouted and ran up the track after her, but I didn’t see her again.’

Willow was sceptical. ‘Couldn’t it just have been an island girl dressed up? Things look so weird in the fog.’

‘I know all the kids in this part of Unst and I didn’t recognize her. But it was more than that. I knew she wasn’t real and that something important was happening to me. It was a kind of religious experience. And she just vanished in front of my eyes.’

Willow knew there could be a number of explanations for the disappearing child, but she didn’t say anything. If she challenged Vaila too hard, she might be offended and clam up. She’d convinced herself that she’d seen an apparition. Willow had met people in the commune who’d believed that trees had spirits, and that a guru from Wolverhampton would save the known universe; she hadn’t been able to persuade them that their ideas were irrational, either.

The woman went on, ‘Besides, there was no fog the next time I saw her.’

‘You saw her again?’

‘That was late July. One of the still, sunny evenings you get sometimes in the summer. I’d spent the evening down with Grusche and George. He’s a relative, a kind of uncle, and when Neil’s working away I sometimes go down to see them. I’m not good with my own company. It was such a fine evening that I took the path along the beach to get home and I saw the lassie again. This time she was quite a way off, just a silhouette up by the standing stone on the headland. I dashed back to George’s house because I wanted someone else to see her. They’d all made fun of me when I said that I’d seen her in the mist. But when we got on the shore and looked up towards the stone there was nothing to be seen.’

‘And that was what you told Eleanor Longstaff?’ It was impossible to tell from Sandy’s voice whether he believed every word or thought it was a load of nonsense.