It is a contradiction of island life that people come looking for isolation and end up craving companionship.
I moved to Gugh last year, suddenly and rudely, telling only my parents and closest friends that I would be going away for a while. "I will write," I told them. I do, in grey ink on sun-washed postcards, telling them nothing much but that I am still alive.
I roll the pen out of my hand so that it clinks against my tepid half-cup of tea and close my eyes for a moment, listening to the Atlantic's rhythmic thrash on the shoreline.
At low tide I am part of a community of about 80, milling among the tourists who visit St Agnes on the Isles of Scilly for a contentedly old-fashioned seaside holiday.
For the other half of the day, or nearly half, I am marooned; alone but for R and S, two kindly men, grizzled and ponderous, who live in the other two sheltered spots in Gugh's wind-twitched heath.
I have tried to divine from skirting walks of their cottages which of us escapes the harshest of the weather. Although my windows rattle and my chimney whistles I am convinced that their ramshackle bungalows have it worse.
I told them in our first encounters I was an artist looking for a retreat, a fabrication that has grown legs as I make use of the materials I bought to maintain the pretence. Lies become brittle quickly in a community as small as this. My work is derivative and inept, but the romance of its setting has lent it enough shine to sell at the quayside gallery as fast as I can produce them.
The locals regard me as a dusky eccentric, a reputation I have idly cultivated with a bohemian wardrobe of gypsy tops and flowing skirts, headscarves and hooped earrings. My Irish mother's first gifts to me were dark hair and blue eyes that once prompted a fairground fortune teller to remark that I reminded her of her youthful self. It was a compliment I stowed away as treasure.
My reputation is far more interesting than my inner mundanity: a woman of 40 jilted by her long-term lover, seeking escape from a city where her vivacity had been muffled into listless routine.
I add the postcard to the stack that awaits the low tide and take the too-pink pashmina from the back of the chair. There are no unfamiliar walks to me on Gugh but as I begin my evening constitutional I see a figure by the submerged causeway who is instantly out of place. His stance and, when he starts toward me, his gait are nothing like those of R and S.
I shade my eyes against the setting sun. He is a slight man, early 30s perhaps, not an obviously outdoorsy type. He is not dressed against the wind or the rain that begins to spot us now, softly at first. As he closes the gap between us I decide that I shall look after him.
Is there a way across, he wants to know. "Not for three hours," I say. "You'd better come with me."
The raindrops are gobbets now. "Come," I say as I turn my back and lead him briskly home. We are not fast enough, not on the route I choose. Our sodden clothes drip onto the flagstones in my hallway. I have a last moment of doubt about my plans for him and then push it away.
"You'd better take your clothes off here," I say. "I'll find you something to wear."
I leave him in the hall and set the bath running. "Have you eaten?" I call to him along the passageway. He has not, since lunch. "I'll fix that, too," I tell him.
I look at him in the hall, half-dressed and shivering. "Your bath will be ready in a few minutes. Mind it doesn't overflow and I'll leave your clothes outside the door."
My plan had been to lend him the least feminine garments in my possession, the baggy jumpers, woolly socks and tracksuit trousers. With the bath and the clothes and the food he would be obliged to me, enough for a kiss and a cuddle at least.
As I open the chest of drawers to replace my own damp wet clothes another thought takes root. I take out a pair of black knickers and pause. They are plain briefs, without lace, but the front panel is satin while the back is a semi-opaque mesh. Could these help to turn a kiss and a cuddle into something more? I put them in his pile and delve to see what else might suit.
Rather than trousers he could wear leggings. They are for fashion rather than sport, high-waisted and shiny, but they are ambiguous enough. For a top I choose one in sober-looking bottle green. It is a polyester blouse, silky in texture with a cowl neck and three-quarter length sleeves.
I consider my black satin button-up blouse as an alternative but it would never fit him. I put it in a pile for myself along with a silk gypsy skirt and wide patent belt. I consider knickers but decide against.
Until it is my turn in the bath I shall settle for my dressing gown.
I decide that it would be better to put his pile of clothes inside the bathroom. "Don't mind me," I say as I place them on the chair by the door and gather up the ones he left there. All of our wet clothes and even his drier ones go in the washing machine for a long cycle.
It will be fisherman's pie for dinner, reheated from last night. As I prepare some vegetables I hear a querulous voice.
Do I want him to leave the bathwater for me?
"I'm just coming," I call, and find him sheltering behind the bathroom door, unclothed but for a towel that is too small to wrap around his waist.
"Oh," I say, disappointed not to find him dressed as I intended. "Well, get dressed then."
He makes as if to speak. I interrupt. "Quickly please, unless you want my bathwater to get cold."
He ducks back inside. The sound of a petulant sigh is followed by the whispering stretch of material as the clothes go on.
