John knew that he should have stayed and stuck it out with Elizabeth, but if he had he would have caused a scene, and she would hate that. He had wanted to shout at them as they sat around the table, their faces long and sallow because of the strange, lemon light of the tillies.

“What does it matter to you?” he had wanted to say. “It’s only a weekend retreat for you, a hobby, a game. It’s our home, our livelihood. It was going to be the home of my child.”

His anger was directed as much at the other guests as at Charlie.

“I’ve created this place,” he had wanted to say. “ I ring more birds here than the rest of you put together. It’s my sea-watching that’s made Gillibry famous. I don’t mind if you take the credit for that, but don’t pretend that you care more about the place than I do.”

Without thinking he began the walk that he made at least twice a day around the trapping area. It was dark, but he did not need a torch. The path was so familiar that the street lamps on the mainland provided all the light he needed. He walked quickly past the dining-room windows. No one saw him. They had finished eating. He did not notice Charlie’s distinctive white hair, and wondered if he had returned to the Wendy House. Poor Charlie, he thought, as he always did when he contemplated the older man’s awkwardness and loneliness. The instinctive reaction, such inappropriate sympathy, surprised then amused him, and his anger began to dissipate. He felt happier away from the claustrophobic tension of the dining room. The observatory and outbuildings were surrounded by a high whitewashed wall. He walked through the painted gates and he was out on the island. He followed the track to the stile over the drystone wall where the stonechats called in spring, and climbed into the paddock. Mushrooms grew there, skylark and meadow pipit bred there. He had seen his first long-eared owl in the paddock, and still remembered the bright orange eyes, the fine mottled plumage. There was no need to check the trap. It had been shut at dusk. But he walked through the big wire-netting cage as he did when he was trying to flush birds into the glass trapping box, and returned to the paddock through a netting door at the funnel end of the trap. The next heligoland had been built over a gully cut into a rock by a stream taking the shortest cut to sea level. He had caught an aquatic warbler in the gully trap. He had not known what it was until he had taken it from the box. Birdwatchers had come from all over the county to see that. The ground was boggy and the grass was long and coarse. In spring there were orchids. He stepped across the stream and climbed the steep bank on the other side. He was on the high area of the island which they called the Beacon. Further west, down the slope towards the sea, there was bramble and buckthorn, two more traps and a lot more memories. Here there was only dying bracken and a small cairn to mark the highest point on Gillibry.