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 grandfather had come from Eriksay, while its details, its decorations, told of fishing and faith, of the sea and the sand. And this series of zigzags across one shoulder — these here, look — represented the ups and downs of marriage. They were, quite literally, marriage lines.

Zigzags. Like any newly married couple, they had exchanged a glance of sly confidence, sure that for them there would be no downs — or at least, not downs like those of their parents, or those of friends who were already making the usual stupid, predictable mistakes. They would be different, they would be different from everyone who had ever got married before.