Effie Seabright, we’ve been fated to meet you for a long time.

... all sorts of wonderful things got washed up on the beach – crates of clothes and cutlery and children’s toys, boxes of engine parts and television screens and electrical wires like tangled snakes in the water. I found them fascinating, like relics from a distant time, even though I knew it was us who lived in the past.

I had never seen the view at this time before, at the very pinnacle of night when sunset was far behind us and dawn had not yet risen rosy-fingered from the horizon. The night was ashen, tones of granite and iron and heather in the ripples of the waves, which were calmer than earlier in the day. It was as if even the ocean was drowsy – a pale, weighty moon hung full and pregnant in the sky, its reflection floating lambent on the water.

It didn’t feel like the Fates were looking over me that day. When I glanced up, I couldn’t see destiny’s threads tangling in the sky like the silk of a giant spider’s web, woven by three pairs of gnarled, arthritic hands. All I saw was blue – the timeless blue of an empty sky, and the restless blue of a rough ocean.

Even now I ask myself, what would have happened if I had gone to the cove with Tansy that Thursday afternoon, instead of going to the beach? If I had stayed away from the boat at the jetty, hidden from sight? If I had thrown the pearl back in the sea at the first opportunity when I had seen the look in Rammell’s eyes? But then I reason that it probably wouldn’t have made any difference. The Fates had spun my destiny, and I was tight roping along the threads that tangled in the sky, regardless of the drop below.

I no longer hated the whining, menacing dragonfly we rode in, but admired its grace as we surged towards the clouds, the lights of Edinburgh twinkling below us like the starry constellations of a world upside down.

Maybe they want us to feel uneasy. Maybe they think we’ll make a mistake if they’re constantly breathing down our necks.’ I shivered violently, as if I really could feel the hot, hungry breath of evil intentions panting just behind me.

Maybe, if I had lied all those years ago, my life could have followed a very different path. But as it is I faithfully follow the long, long thread the Fates have woven for me.

Here was the puppeteer who was pulling strings all over the Empire. Didn’t he know that the Fates were the only ones who could tweak the threads of destiny?

If you continue to threaten us, I will act upon my threat.’ I felt silly using the precise language of bargaining dictators and gangsters, but they seemed to take it seriously. Stickings’ smirk almost completely faded. ‘The thing is, Effie –’ his voice dropped to barely a murmur, ‘– I don’t believe you.

If he came back in and ventured just a step too close to me, I would do it. I had been tempered in a furnace of Stickings’ making, and I had come out stronger.