“I’ve been looking for you on the shore,” she said. “Nick and Mark have put up a net at the north end and I thought that you might be with them.”

“Nick did say that he wanted to go ringing. I’d forgotten.”

“I’ve just come up through the Wendy House garden,” she said.

“Oh?” He was still watching the Lundy light. He counted the space between flashes. He seemed overcome by an overwhelming apathy.

“I almost went in to see Charlie. The light was still on. I thought that I might tell him that I’m pregnant. I thought it might make him change his mind.”

“But you didn’t?” He hardly seemed interested.

“No. I decided that it was better not to. If we leave him alone perhaps nothing will come of it. He’s always getting these enthusiasms, but they never last long, and he doesn’t usually follow them through. He only bought the island because Doctor Derbyshire organized it for him. All Charlie had to do was sign his name. But if we bully him, he might get stubborn.”

“You seem calm.” For the first time he turned his attention from the light on the horizon. “You were upset when he told us. You’d been crying.”

“That was surprise, I suppose. Shock. And my hormones.”

“What are they all doing? Did they have the AGM?”

“They couldn’t really, without you, and Charlie went home straight after supper. I don’t think that anyone felt that they could concentrate. Mark helped me to wash up, then he and Nick put up a net.”

“Have they caught anything?”

“Yes, but nothing special.”

“What about the others?”

“Earlier Pam and Jerry were having a row in the common room. I suppose that the doctor and Jasmine had discreetly made themselves scarce. I don’t know where they all are now.”

“Were they offended that I left in the middle of the meal?”

“I don’t think that they noticed. Everyone was absorbed in his own worry. They all pretended that nothing had happened.”

She turned to him and kissed his forehead. She had a sweet, dark smell, like flowers in a summer night. He wanted to lean against her, to lose himself again in the darkness, but she despised weakness.

“Come on,” she said. “Do you want to help Mark and Nick take down the net, or shall we go home?”

“Home.”

She went first, sure-footed, down the slope to the track, and she saw the fire first, and began to run. He heard her shouting, but he was still dazed after his dreaming on the hill in the darkness. It took him a while to realize what was wrong, then he was running too, and he found that he, too, was shouting.

The light behind the trees in the Wendy House garden was too bright; it moved and threw dark shadows. There was a smell of smoke.

They found the fire extinguisher just inside the unlocked door. It must have come with the Wendy House. Charlie would never have thought to buy one. Unbelievably, in the wood-panelled sitting room he was still asleep. He was leaning back on the cushion of his rocking chair, his mouth open, snoring. He was a notoriously heavy sleeper and he did not wake until Elizabeth shouted at him. Inside the fire was not as frightening as it had seemed from outside. One of the curtains was alight, and because the window was open the flames, sparks and smoke billowed outside. Next to the curtain, on a small table under the window, a tilly was lying on its side. But without the extinguisher they would not have put out the fire. Charlie made no attempt to help them, but watched with a kind of sleepy excitement as John used the extinguisher and Elizabeth tried to beat out the flames with an orange, woven rug.