‘This way,’ Fiona says, her voice too loud in the windy silence.

‘Where are we going?’ I say as she starts marching away across the meadow.

She slows only to look over her shoulder. ‘The Aird Einish light. It’s why we’re here, isn’t it?’

The headland on the opposite side of the bay is far longer and steeper. The way quickly goes from flat and boggy to steep and rocky. I’m sweating and out of breath by the time I manage to catch up to Fiona at its summit. The Atlantic wind is bitter cold as I stand and look across to the exposed cliff edge. At Fiona’s ‘Aird Einish light’.

‘Shit.’ I shake my head, close my mouth.

I’d been expecting a wooden or skeletal beacon tower, something easily reached, easily sabotaged. Instead, this is a lighthouse in every sense of the word. A white cylindrical stone tower with ochre trim that must be at least one hundred feet, with a balcony and huge metal cage around the black lamp room at its summit. A long, single-storey building sits alongside it and a high stone wall encloses both.

‘It’s a Stevenson lighthouse,’ Fiona says without looking at me. ‘One of the best examples. Built in 1899 by Robert Louis Stevenson’s uncle, no less. A hundred and seventy-one steps to the lamp room.’

‘Shit,’ I say again. I can’t stop looking at it, this huge tower, its shadow almost reaching us on the edge of the headland.

Fiona’s answering laugh is more of a bark, short and humourless.

‘Did they ever find out?’ I finally say. ‘Why it failed the night of the storm?’

Because nobody could have sabotaged that lamp, that light. Much less a ten-year-old boy with a slingshot and some rocks.

‘A technical fault. My dad was from Islivig, just up the road. He said it had only been automated a few years, so they sent engineers from Glasgow. Replaced the lamp and the lens.’ She looks back towards the bay. ‘Most folk round here thought it was for show. To be seen to be doing. No one was ever told exactly what went wrong.’ There’s another bite to her voice then, and I recognise Sheena in it. In her. Fiona MacDonald seems like a completely different person away from Alec. I wonder if this is the Fiona MacDonald that comes to life whenever he goes back to the rigs.

‘Anyway.’ She turns round abruptly. ‘I’m dropping in on a friend in Ardroil, if you fancy coming?’

‘No, I—’ I make myself look at her instead of the lighthouse. ‘I think I’ll go to Ardshader since I’m here, have a look around.’

Fiona shrugs, looks across the bay towards the houses on the flat and grassy southwest headland. ‘That storm killed Ardshader. Einish too. Even closed the harbour. It’s why Dad left. After the storm, there was nothing here for anyone. Most people went to family on the mainland. Some went to Canada.’ She turns back to me, struggles to hold my gaze for more than a few seconds before she swallows and looks away again. ‘It’s just a place of ghosts.’