Then: ‘What the hell’s that?’ asked Marnie, clutching Christopher’s arm as something went shooting across the water . . . something undulating, with a long neck. ‘Oh, it’s gone! Don’t tell me that Loch Ness Monsters live here too?’ She sounded quite shaken.

‘Those were red-throated divers.’ Christopher felt in his pocket for his binoculars. ‘I think there were about three of them. They’ve dived now but take a look through these when one of them pops up again. They have these extraordinary courtship displays and when several males get together and skidder through the water at great speed, with their bodies half under the surface, they look remarkably like some old plesiosaur surfacing after aeons to take a look at the twenty-first century. You’re not the first person to mistake them for a monster. They’ll have been having a race to impress a lady – very medieval, very in keeping with a castle!’ He laughed down at her. ‘If there was anyone else to race with, I’d be tempted to do the same right now!’

‘You don’t need to,’ she said. ‘You’ve won me already. I think you know that.’

‘Happy?’ he asked.

‘So happy.’

Eventually they spotted one of the divers, which had resurfaced further up the loch, and Marnie was able to look at it through the glasses.

‘I can’t pick out any red on its throat in this light,’ she said. ‘Aren’t there other sorts of divers? How do you know which is which if you can’t see the colour?’

‘Ah well, the red-throats are easy to identify because they’re such snobs.’

‘Snobs?’

He grinned. ‘They always swim with their noses in the air.’

They walked a little way along the shore, arms round each other, watching the colours change and soften and begin to fade as the castle and the water seemed to get darker and darker till they became almost indistinguishable and a first faint star appeared in the sky.

‘Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight, I wish I might get the wish I wish tonight,’ chanted Marnie softly, a memory suddenly stirring of a skinny little girl being taught the old, old jingle by a fragile old lady a long time ago, and how they had both wished on a star together under a Caribbean sky.

‘Let’s go back now,’ said Christopher. ‘Tomorrow we’ll come adventuring again, but I know what my wish for tonight is, darling Marnie, and there’s a much more comfortable place waiting for us where I can show you just what that is . . .’

Chapter Twenty-seven