For one long moment Morag didn’t realise what was happening. Then she did. Unbelievably, she did. It seemed impossible but there was no time to wonder if she was right or not.

Earthquake?

‘Robbie, out! Get away from the house.’ She shoved Robbie out the door before he could utter a response. Elspeth gave a terrified whimper and bolted after him, and they were barely clear before Morag was back in the bedroom, hauling Hubert out of bed and of the house after Robbie and Elspeth.

‘What the…?’ For someone supposedly ready to meet his maker, Hubert clearly had a way to go. He was white with terror. Morag was practically carrying him across the cottage floor as his old feet tried their hardest to scuttle on a surface that was weirdly unstable.

‘It must be an earthquake.’ She had him clear of the doorway now. Robbie was crouched on the back lawn, holding onto Elspeth, and the dog was whimpering in terror.

‘I don’t believe it.’ Hubert sank to his knees and grabbed his dog as well. ‘We haven’t had one of these on the island for eighty years.’

They were clear now of anything that could fall. The earth seemed to be steadying again and she had everyone well away from the house. Morag was hugging Robbie, and Robbie and Hubert were both hugging Elspeth, so they were crazily attached. It was a weird intimacy in the face of shared peril.

They didn’t talk. Talking seemed impossible. They just knelt and waited for a catastrophe that…that suddenly seemed as if it might not happen.

More silence. It was almost eerie. They sat and waited some more but the tremors seemed to have stopped.

Then they sat up and unattached themselves. Sort of. A bit.

‘Was it really an earthquake?’ Robbie demanded, and when Morag nodded, he let out his breath in one long ‘Cool…’

But his body was still pressed against Morag’s and he was still holding on.