David shrinks into his jacket and mutters, ‘There’s no getting away from it, people have seen some odd things. Your aunt, for one.’

My heart beats a little faster. ‘Sarah?’

His body tenses on the seat next to me. ‘When did you last speak to her?’ he asks.

I fiddle with my nose stud, not wanting to say the wrong thing. ‘A while ago. Why?’

‘I’m afraid she’s … well, she’s more preoccupied of late.’

I nod, pretending to understand. ‘Is it the same thing as before?’

‘Aye. I don’t think living alone helps, but she refuses to leave the island – reckons she needs to keep them at bay.’ He clearly thinks I know what he means by ‘them’, and I don’t want him to realise I know nothing about her.

He peers at the sky again then narrows his eyes at me. ‘You look just like her, you know. I saw the family resemblance straight off.’

I glance away, excited to know it’s not just the man who replied to my post who thinks we look alike.

He huffs and adds, ‘I don’t like to think of her alone there in winter. It’s not right, being the only one on the island without a living soul for company.’

I glance at the misty outline of the island, which is growing bigger by the minute, and a pulse of alarm beats in my throat. I knew Bardsey had a small population but I didn’t realise we would literally be the only ones there apart from my mother.

‘Is there no one else on the island at all?’

‘There are ten families who live there in summer and the holiday cottages are always booked up, thanks to the tourists. But everyone leaves in winter, even the animals.’

‘You said you were bringing them across tomorrow. Do you mean people’s pets?’

He laughs. ‘No, the farm animals. There’s a larger boat we use to take over livestock. We bring the whole lot of them to the mainland before winter sets in.’

‘Because of the cold?’

He gives me a strange look. ‘That too.’

‘Can’t anyone stay to look after them? It seems a lot of effort to move them all.’

He shrugs. ‘The island trust hired a family to act as caretakers a few years back. They came over from the mainland and were meant to maintain the holiday cottages and look after the place in winter. They made a BBC documentary about it. The family didn’t last two minutes. Their little lad slipped on the rocks their first day here and got his leg badly cut up. The island likes company in summer, but come winter … No, you couldn’t pay me to stay.’

Something dark and vast slides across the surface of my thoughts like the shadow of a cormorant flying overhead, and I decide that I don’t want to hear any more of his stories.

I grab the edge of the seat and get to my feet. ‘I should check on Tom.’