I want you to know that you are, and always will be, welcome in my lighthouse. I am a difficult old woman – though I am a different kind of difficult now. Less confident in my creation and more confident in my doubts. And still no one can tell me what to do. You wouldn’t want them to, would you? There will be no old folks’ home for me. Perhaps, when I am ready, I’ll walk straight into the sea. Though I worry sometimes that I would float. I wish I had more weight to me, to my bones and muscles. Terrible, the way we become smaller like this.

There is a buzzard sitting outside on the fence post. I have seen her a few times now – I think it is the female, though to be honest I couldn’t tell you how to distinguish between them. I can watch her, watching me, from the window opposite my chair, when I turn my back to the fire, which I like to do sometimes – it warms the back of my neck, then, and the back of my neck feels the frost like a paper cut.

Once, when I was out walking the black rocks, I saw a pair of them, sitting in a crevice on the cliffs. They didn’t look anything special like that – just birds of prey, a medium-brown colour, large enough to stand out but not the size of an eagle, nothing like that. An average bird of prey, I would have said, from seeing them huddled against the greyish rock face. But then the wind resonated and they both took flight and, while hardly moving at all, seemed to glide towards me. They were so low, as they approached, I could see the extraordinary white crescent markings on their chests … the patterns like delicate carvings on the underside of their wings … the extent of their elegant wingspan itself. I craned my neck, following their flight, staring straight overhead as they passed. And then they were gone, distant, brown average-sized birds of prey again. As though the display of their captivating beauty was for me alone.

I don’t know if I am trying to assert a cause and effect here where none exists, but I’m fairly certain that it was after that day that she began to perch, usually first thing in the morning or at the tail end of dusk, on my fence post. Perhaps – just perhaps – we reached some kind of understanding that day. I think she has come to keep me company. She watches me as I wait for you, and as she watches me I start to hope that my waiting is not futile.

If I see her stretch out her wings again I may start to hope that there is no such thing as futility.

Chapter 11