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Flora had taken out of a drawer an old sweater which had belonged to her grandfather. She laid it on the kitchen table, ironing it with her palms. In the old days, she explained, the women of these islands used to tell stories with their knitting. The pattern of this jersey showed that her grandfat…

he first time they had come to the island, they weren’t yet married. She had worn a wedding ring as a concession to…what? — to how they imagined the island morality to be. It made them feel both superior and hypocritical at the same time. Their room at Calum and Flora’s B&B had whitewashed walls, r…

She half smiled, but without a smidgen of humour. ‘Only, I was to lie facing the artist…’

Two yards away, Hugh fidgeted in his sleep.

She leaned further forward, her chin almost to her knees. ‘Like I said, we loved each other very much—well above a passion.’ Her voice was growing softer and s…

she quite often looked towards him in a peremptory way

Najma had married a Pakistani who came here to study engineering, and the two of them were living in Watford, with twins. I went out to see them a few times.

One kid had a fever, the other was perhaps a little backward. The couple had been racially harassed, knew no one, and the husband was out …