She leaned against the marker stone, sheltering as best she could. As she looked back at the island, the light was beginning to fade. It wouldn’t be dark for a couple of hours, but the colour was seeping out of the grass and the stone.

Then, suddenly, she was pitched back more than thirty years. Another autumn afternoon. Another wild dash to Holy Island just before the tide. Then Hector had been driving and she’d been an unwilling passenger, bullied to accompany him. She’d been in the middle of her A-level year and had been reluctant to leave her books.

‘Come on, Vee,’ he’d said. ‘All work and no play . . . ’ And she’d done as he’d wanted. Then she always did.

He’d bought her lunch in the Lindisfarne Hotel and drunk too much. Red wine with his steak, and whisky after. He talked a lot, became excitable, almost manic. If it had been the spring, Vera would have suspected he was planning a raid on birds’ eggs. Hector had been an egg collector all his life; it wasn’t a passing childhood phase, but an obsession, a strange passion. It was also a business because he traded the eggs, and collected rare ones on commission. That, and a small inheritance from his family, was all the family had to live on. The business was illegal of course, and that was why Hector enjoyed it so much: he loved the risk, the possibility that he might be caught.

But that time thirty-five years ago it had been autumn too, and long past the breeding season. There would be no eggs on the shore or along the edges of the pools. Nothing to steal.

When the time came to pay the bill, Hector pulled his wallet from his jacket pocket. He held it under the table to take out the money, but Vera saw him. She’d always been curious, a child who pried into other people’s business. It was stuffed with notes, more cash than she could count. Presumably he’d recently made a good sale. Once he’d sold a young peregrine to an Arab prince and they’d lived well for months.

After lunch Hector said he was going for a walk. ‘No need for you to come, Vee.’ His tone breezy. ‘You can sit in the Land Rover and do some work.’ Because that time there had been no hotel room. They planned to leave as soon as the tide ebbed. She waited in the car park until he’d disappeared down the straight lonnen towards the coast. Then she went after him. Partly because she was bored, and partly because she didn’t trust him. Occasionally he stopped and looked behind him, checking that nobody was following. He hadn’t seen Vera. Even then she was a big young woman, but she could move quickly and knew how to hide, how to fade into the landscape. Hector had taught her well when he’d taken her on his raids in the hills for eggs and young birds of prey.