Its lower slopes looked gentle, but there was a central outcrop of rock that appeared almost cubic, as though cut by some giant hand with a dull knife. This mass was settled on to the centre of the island as though the same hand that had cut it had placed it down, forcing it into the earth like a cake decoration into icing. Its sides were almost vertical and striated with dark fissures and it looked to be fifty or sixty feet tall, although Charlotte found it hard to judge this accurately and changed her mind every time she gazed at it.

The church was in front of the outcrop, tiny and colourful against the doleful grey of the rock face. Its walls were a startling white with blue edging, the roof a wash of the same blue. By squinting, Charlotte could just make out a door in the front of the building and a cross, set at the front of the roof. At night, the church was lit by a pale yellow light that flickered in time with the wind; Charlotte assumed that oil lamps hung around its exterior. The light made its walls shimmer and stand out starkly against the grey stone mass behind it. The mass itself loomed even more at night, rearing and blocking out the stars in the Greek darkness. It gave the impression of being man-made; the crags and fissures became the battlements of a castle, abandoned and decaying but resisting a final collapse with bleak force. It, too, appeared lit at its base by the same yellowing illumination. Charlotte never saw anyone light the lamps.

In fact, as hard and as often as she looked (and she spent long periods of time simply staring at the island, to Roger's irritation), she only ever saw one person at the church, and then only for a fleeting moment. A shadow framed in the doorway, seen in the corner of her eye as she turned away, that was gone by the time she turned back. It had to be a person, she told herself.