‘Look,’ he said, trying not to sound impatient, but disturbed by her intensity. ‘We’ve all been rootling around in our past, and owls are clearly important to Louisa – it’s what she wrote about in the same way you wrote about the Caribbean. It’s been on her mind as your strange childhood has been on yours.’

‘Yes, I know. That’s exactly what I told her too . . . it’s what I thought myself at the time . . . but now this has happened it changes things. You must admit it’s a very strange coincidence.’

‘I don’t admit anything of the sort . . . you’re reading a significance into this that’s not there. You’re getting yourself in a state about something that isn’t really your issue because you’ve got so much genuinely difficult emotional stuff to cope with yourself. I believe it’s called displacement.’

‘Oh, spare me the psycho-babble,’ she flashed. They glared at each other, their tempers rising dangerously, and then they both said ‘Sorry’ at exactly the same moment.

‘Damn, damn, damn! I didn’t mean to sound so pompous and unsympathetic,’ said Christopher, cursing himself for a fool. ‘It’s just that I can’t bear to see you so upset, when I really don’t think you need to be. Let’s finish our tour of the house first, then when we go outside I’ll find somewhere to give the bird a decent burial, and this evening we’ll ring up Glendrochatt to tell them all about finding your castle and you can check up on Louisa. I’ll bet you anything you’ll find she and her owl will both be fine, but it will put your mind at rest and you needn’t tell her about this one if you think it might upset her. How’s that?’

‘Okay,’ she said, making a conscious effort to calm down, feeling rather foolish to have been so dramatic. ‘Yeah . . . I’d like to do that. I promised Isobel I’d let her know how we got on anyway. I see why you think I’m over-reacting, but it really freaked me out. Let’s go on up to the top of the house now. I remember being told that the children’s nurseries were on the top floor of the tower and that the Contessa and her brother used to get out on to the battlements, which was strictly forbidden, and frightened their mother into fits.’

‘Good idea. And I know what else I think we ought to do pretty soon.’

‘What?’

‘Eat! I don’t know about you but I feel distinctly peckish. How about having our picnic after that?’

‘Goodness, yes. I’m starving too!’ She determined to put the owl out of her mind. ‘We could have it by the loch.’