But a hurricane does not come without warning. News of the gathering storm would sweep the island as swiftly as any breeze, scattering rumours of its speed, the position of its eye, the measure of its breath. I was too far from home to return safely on the day of the hurricane and Mrs Ryder needed my assistance. Luckily no children had yet arrived for the school term but the building had to be prepared for the onslaught to come. And her husband was nowhere to be found. ‘He’ll be somewhere safe – I know it,’ Mrs Ryder told me, without concern. ‘This will be my first hurricane and I don’t mind telling you, Hortense, I find it quite exciting.’ She skipped like a giddy girl, bolting the shutters with a delighted laugh. She hummed a song as we stowed chairs and desks and locked cupboards. She looked in the mirror, combing her hair, before we secured the doors. And turning to me she said, ‘Wouldn’t it be something to stand in a hurricane, to feel the full force of God’s power in all its might?’ But I was saying a prayer that the schoolhouse roof would stand firm and did not bother to answer such a ridiculous notion.

It was no surprise to me when Michael knocked at the door of the schoolhouse. For how could he stay at home during a hurricane? After leading the agitated goats and chickens, flapping and straining, into the safety of the barn; after securing the shutters, shaking them as ferociously as a man could, then checking them again – twice, three times; after leading Miss Jewel and Miss Ma to gather up lamps, chocolate and water, he would have to sit confined in the windowless room at the centre of the house with Mr Philip. And the rage inside would have blown as fierce as the tempest outside. So Michael ran two miles to be with me on the day of the hurricane. Two miles through an eerie birdless silence that scared as much as the wind that followed.

Was his shirt wet from the rain or the exertion of running? It cleaved to the muscles of his body, transparent in patches, revealing his smooth brown skin underneath. His chest was rising and bulging with every lungful of panted breath. Sweat dripped from his forehead, down his cheek and over his full lips. ‘Michael Roberts,’ I told him at the door, ‘I am capable of looking after myself. You do not have to come all the time to protect me.’ Looking in my eye without a word he pulled the clinging shirt from his body, flapping at it gently. He wiped his hand across his neck, over his forehead and let his chest fall.

But then, catching sight of Mrs Ryder over my shoulder, he looked suddenly alarmed. And pushing me, not gently, to one side he went straight to her. He flew so fast towards her I feared he was going to embrace her. He called her Stella – a familiar name that even Mr Ryder would not use in my company. ‘Stella,’ he said, ‘I saw your husband in his car and I thought you might be . . .’ he hesitated, looking over to me before saying ‘. . . alone.’

The three of us sat tender as bugs caught in the grasp of a small boy as rain pelted the walls. Fear gradually began to appear in the eyes of Mrs Ryder. Her girlish enthusiasm for the hurricane evaporated every time the roof bounced like a flimsy skin. At times the wind would just knock at the door, no more frightening than an impatient caller. At other times it would shriek like a dreadful choir of the tortured. And the bumping, the thumping, the crashing, the banging, no matter how distant, all made Mrs Ryder wail, ‘Oh, Michael, thank God you are here.’

And all the time I wondered, How did Michael know her given name was Stella?

A shutter flew open. A gust exhaled into the room. Suddenly everything – books, papers, chairs, clothes – took on life and danced in the unseen torrent. And a shoe soared in through the opening, hurtling to a stop against the blackboard. Michael struggled to secure the shutter while Mrs Ryder looked on the dead cloth shoe and screamed. Michael forced the shutter closed until the room breathed a sort of calm. But Mrs Ryder was sobbing. Her blonde hair a little ruffled but her cheeks still white, her skin still delicate with a fine blue tracery of veins and her voice, when she said, ‘Oh, Michael, I’m scared,’ still sounded like a movie star’s. He had no hesitation when he went to her to place his arm round her shoulders.

‘Hortense, light another lamp,’ was all he could say to me. The lights threw our shadows on to the wall. On what hour of what day did this married woman tell Michael to call her Stella? Stella, he spoke softly to her. Stella, he calmed her with. Stella, he caressed. In what grocery store did Mrs Ryder give Michael the freedom to speak as familiar as her husband?

‘Mrs Ryder,’ I said softly, ‘are you thinking where your husband might be?’ She looked tearful eyes on me but made no reply. Michael put his hand over Mrs Ryder’s, slipping his fingers delicately through hers. She cast her bewitching blue eyes at him and squeezed his fingers tight.

With a hurricane, when you think you can take no more it grows stronger. It should have been I that was in need of a chaperone – a single young woman caught in a darkened room alone with a handsome man for who knows how long. It should have been I who feared for the talk that would fall from the mouths of busybodies. A married woman like Mrs Ryder should have looked out for my good name. But every sound made them hug up closer. Every gesture drew them together. Until the shadow of their heads took the shape of a heart on the wall. At that moment I wanted to burst from the room, to blow through the windows, to blast through the walls, and escape into the embrace of the dependable hurricane.

No living person should ever see the underside of a tree. The roots – that gnarled, tangled mess of prongs that plummet unruly into the earth in search of sustenance. As I fled from the schoolhouse after the hurricane had passed, the world was upside-down. The fields to my left, to my right, undulated with this black and wretched chaos. Trees ripped from land that had held them fast for years. Branches that should have been seeking light snuffled now in the dirt – their fruit splattered about like gunshot. Tin roofs were on the ground while the squeaking wheels of carts rotated high in the air, disordered and topsy-turvy. I stumbled through this estranged landscape alarmed as a blind man who can now see.

At first I only saw four people huddled around an upright tree, pointing and shaking their heads. Then others came – five, six, seven. Some running from across the field. Some shouting at others to come. All stopping to stare when they reached the old tree. Then, round the legs of a tall man, over the heads of two small children and past the white handkerchief of a woman who dabbed at tears in her eyes, I saw the body of Mr Ryder.

He was dead. Wrapped around the base of the tree like a piece of cloth. His spine twisted and broken in so many places it bent him backwards. He was naked, his clothes torn from him by the storm with only one ragged shirt sleeve still in place. His mouth was open wide – was it a smile or a scream? And around him his butchered insides leaked like a posy of crimson flowers into a daylight they should never have seen.

I believe I might have screamed. I think I screamed, ‘He is a jealous God.’ I might have held my head and yelled, ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife.’ For the small crowd looked on me for a brief moment, frowning, before they resumed their yapping: ‘Where is Mrs Ryder? . . . Mrs Ryder should be informed . . . Someone must bring Mrs Ryder.’ I cannot be sure whether the howling that I heard was only in my head. But I am sure of what I said next. I am certain of what I said, out loud for all to hear. I can clearly recall what I said, in my strong and steady voice – for I said it until all were staring on me.

‘Mrs Ryder is alone in the schoolhouse with Michael Roberts.’