Out of the corner of her eye Sam spied a group of people approaching along the main harbourside street. More invitees? No, a young couple with two kids, one of them in a pushchair. Winter holidaymakers. The adults were bent forward against the wind, and the face of the older child, a boy of eight or nine, was one big scowl — angrily baffled as to why his parents had insisted on dragging him outside in such foul weather when he could be warm indoors with the TV and his Nintendo. The baby, by contrast, was snugly bundled up and blissfully asleep.

They passed by Sam on their way to the tip of the quay. She nodded to the parents and deliberately didn't look at either of the children. Especially not the baby. The family returned soon afterwards, and with grim jollity the father remarked to her, "Bracing!" She nodded again, and this time couldn't prevent her gaze straying to the sleeping infant.

Just a child. Just somebody else's child.

But so small. So serene in slumber. So chubbily perfect.

Sam's throat caught. Her gut knotted. She felt as if she were plummeting in an express elevator.

Her counsellor had told her there would always be moments like this. However much time went by, the feelings would never fully go away and would sometimes catch her unawares. She simply had to bear it, work through it. The moment, like all moments, would pass.

She focused on the coldness of the air, the salt tang of the wind, the rank smell of fish and cooking fat that emanated from behind her, sensations from the present, her immediate surroundings, reality, now.

The past belonged to the past.

Gradually her breathing returned to normal, the dizziness abated, her stomach unclenched. She was herself again.

A small wooden-hulled fishing smack came chugging into the harbour. It drew up alongside the quay, and the captain stepped up to the gunwales and called out, "Bleaney Island. Any here for Bleaney Island?"