I found myself scanning that confusion of rock and shadow, darkness and light, trying to make sense of it. It was like watching the sea: from moment to moment the light fell differently on the recesses and bulges, so that a pattern of gold and grey that I’d seen a moment ago was gone when I looked for it again.

I didn’t remember the cliffs from my visit here all those years ago. I remembered Mum standing here exclaiming and pointing, but I hadn’t seen a thing.

As if silenced by the solemnity of that wall of rock brooding over it, everything was still in the hamlet below. I turned towards the villa. The sun was heavy across my shoulders, so bright it seemed black.

I was going to take a room at the hotel tonight. Why not? Jane Wiseman might appear and tell me what really happened. I was family, after all.

The publican was doing the books at the bar when I came in. Drinking was mostly what happened in this pub, I could see, and bookish ladies of a certain age weren’t the usual customers. He was surprised to be asked for a room.

‘It’ll be seventy-two dollars,’ he said.

‘That’s fine.’

‘There’s no ensuite rooms, love.’

‘That’s okay.’

‘No credit cards either, love. It’ll have to be cash.’

But this bookish lady was determined. ‘That’s okay,’ I said cheerfully. ‘I’m here for the ghost.’

At last he glanced up at me. ‘Mrs Wiseman? That’ll be Room 9.’

I started to explain about her being my great-great-great grandmother. ‘Is it true her ghost appears sometimes?’

I could see him making an effort. I was, after all, prepared to pay seventy-two dollars, cash, for a room with no ensuite.

‘Not appears as such,’ he said. ‘An old lady staying there one time felt something strange. Come down in the morning white as a sheet.’

‘What did she see?’

‘Oh, just sort of creakings. That kind of thing. Tappings.’ He shrugged, then remembered. ‘Oh and one time the piano started playing, all by itself.’

Aha, I thought. ‘Playing what?’

‘Nothing, just noise.’

The room in which Mrs Wiseman tapped and creaked and made an old lady go white as a sheet was small, hemmed in by the trees. Everything was pink except a red-and-orange swirly carpet. Pink walls, darker pink woodwork. Twin beds with pink chenille bedspreads. A pink pressed-tin ceiling.

I’d expected something a little grander. More atmospheric. Less pink. But perhaps it would look better at night.

After nearly two hundred years, the ferry was still the only way across the river. I joined the queue and drove on, scraping the front of the car against the steep ramp.

The tide was turning. The water was dimpled and puckered. As the ferry slid across, a few seagulls came swooping and crying along the river.

I felt my great-great-great grandfather, almost unbearably close. This was his river, his ferry. These cliffs and this bush couldn’t have changed shape much in two hundred years. I was hearing what he heard, seeing what he saw.