He gets up without objecting, and walks over to the open door. Where he pauses.

‘We decided,’ he says, but he only looks ahead, at the night outside the bunkhouse. ‘All of us. Down on the beach, after you left with Dr Okitsu and Will followed. That if you knew the truth …’ I hear his laboured swallow. ‘Whatever you decided to do – to say – we’d agree with it. No matter what.’ He turns back towards me. ‘We’ll all be in the pub, tomorrow lunchtime.’ His expression is pure Charlie: stern and sorrowful. ‘I promise, Maggie, you’re safe here.’ He holds my gaze. ‘No matter what.’

CHAPTER 38

The next day I get up while Miko is still sleeping. Sneak out after leaving her a grateful note that explains very little. It’s less than she deserves, but if it allows her to leave, to feel released of any concern or responsibility, then perhaps it isn’t. I’m still wearing the jumper and leggings she gave me, and I hope she won’t mind that either. I take only my mac; I can’t even look at the clothes I almost drowned in. The clothes that I did drown in.

Outside, the air is clear and fresh; the storm’s oppressiveness has gone. The sky is pale blue and purple, the clouds solitary and white. I glance east towards Blairmore, but head north instead towards Long Stride. Everything aches and twinges. My skin is salt-sore and red; it burns. But I feel bizarrely refreshed. My head is as clear and clean as the air.

The beach is less recovered. The sand is grey rather than pristine white. Marred by tidelines of seaweed and broken shells, and deep jagged gouges filled with seawater that make me shiver. My chest aches. I rub my breastbone, wince when I remember the bruise that the heel of Charlie’s hand has left. I think of his face, stony and distraught, and that ache gets bigger.

I walk west slowly until I reach those two standing stones. THE FISHERMAN, tall and stark and granite-stern, and its neighbour, with all its swirls and scrolls of softer sandstone. FOR LORNE. It makes me think of forlorn – pitifully sad and abandoned, or a hope unlikely to succeed. I suppose that choice is mine.

I don’t want to make it. I want to do nothing. I want to forget all that I’ve fought so hard to know. I want to feel safe and quiet. I don’t want the responsibility of deciding anyone’s fate ever again.

But Robert killed Lorne because he never took responsibility. He never asked for help. He never escaped that lighthouse, nor the long shadow it cast over his life. Alec, Thom, Bruce, and Fiona never took responsibility for sabotaging an already damaged man. And the rest of the villagers never took responsibility for helping him to die.

I look up at the sun as a fine mist of rain moves in from the sea, cooling my skin and speckling the sand darker. I look across at the empty western cliffs of Roeness wreathed in cotton-wool clouds. I’m not inside a goldfish bowl, looking out at a world I’m not part of. Not any more. I’m here. I’m part of this place, these people. And they are part of me.