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is a sudden flutter as we cut through a group of kittiwakes rising and turning on the air ahead of us, then settling back into the water. The engine drones on and on, and in spite of all my waterproofs I am getting cold and damp and the constant cycle of tensing and relaxing is making my stomach churn too.
    Minutes later I’m sat next to Alex on the floor of the boat, heaving into the bucket. Mostly water, but my stomach has finally given in. Alex is lying down, groaning.
    ‘Don’t you have any seasickness medicine?’
    ‘We don’t believe in it.’
    ‘What d’you mean?’
    ‘Medicines are of the world of men. We don’t believe in them.’
    ‘W-what are you on about?’ She sits up. ‘I want to go back. You have to take me back right now!’ But she says this without much conviction because she is struck by another fit of retching.
    Hannah, who seems to be totally unaffected, sits staring out to sea. ‘Live for the Victory!’ she says. ‘Won’t be long now. Look, there it is.’
    In the distance, rising out of the clouds, is the shape of land. The sharp peaks of the Devil’s Seat shrouded in mist, and the cliffs fringed with the white haze of sea spray. Home.
    For a long while the island hangs on the horizon like a vision, not getting any closer, as if the boat is not moving forward but wallowing in the chop. The wind picks up and the rain returns, misting the windows of the cabin so that it’s hard to see anything at all. The light is beginning to dim, although it’s the summer and the sky never gets truly dark. It feels as if we’ve been on this boat for weeks not hours. I lie down on the floor, the metal cool against my hot cheeks. Alex lies next to me, curled up like a baby. Her eyes are tight shut and her cheeks are a kind of pale green. She looks really sick.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. As if it’s my fault that she’s sick.
    ‘How much longer?’ she mumbles.
    ‘Not long,’ I say, and the next time I raise my head from the deck I see the cliffs of New Canaan looming high above us, close enough now to make out the crags and scars of the cliff-face, and the birds – fulmars and gannets and gulls – swirling above us in great numbers.
    I stand up unsteadily. Father is still outside with Terry. Against the cliffs we are tiny. This is the most dangerous part of the journey. The bay is a natural harbour, sheltered by the cliffs on three sides and from the sea by a line of half-submerged rocks; to get in and out a boat has to navigate a narrow channel between the rocks and the cliffs. When the weather is rough it’s almost impossible because the transition from the calm tidal wash of the harbour to the boil of the open sea would take any boat and overwhelm it or fling it against the sharp rocks. Here the sea is at its most dangerous. Sailors call this the Hag’s Cauldron.
    All around us the surf booms, big breakers that are more like the winter sea than anything you’d expect in the summer. I can see the narrow gap in the waves that will take us to the harbour, but the boat seems so unsteady, even at full power, against the sea that pulls us in many different directions at once. The captain keeps the boat steady and aims the prow. A huge wave lifts us up sideways, water crashing down over the side, and for a second I think we won’t make it, but the engine pushes us through and suddenly we’re in the calmer water of the harbour.
    Once we are away from the open sea everything is quieter. The waves ripple rather than crash. Seals loll on the rocks, watching us with eyes like black moons. I can smell them too, the fishy stink of their breath. I open the door of the cabin; the noise has changed from the battering of the open sea to the lap of the water and the chug of the boat’s engine.
    Straight ahead rises a line of trees, stunted willow and hazel and knotted blackthorn. This island is the only one with trees, because of how this sheltered bay gives way to a hollow gorge, worn away by the water