Eva held on to a bucket and a net with a blue plastic rim. She was going to catch crabs in the rock pools, and the tiny black fish that darted faster than a blink below the surface. And a picnic, they sat on the rocks and ate cherry tomatoes and strips of carrot, watched the waves crashing into the jagged rocks below them – there was layer upon layer of those black and brown and rusty-coloured rocks, she’d never seen a landscape like it. And then, later, after all the fish had been returned to their rock pools and storm clouds were moving in from the east, her mother insisted they climb the tall, padlocked gate that led into the private garden of the lighthouse.

Eva felt like they were doing something wrong. There was a big sign saying keep out. The fence was high, and in places it had barbed wire. But her mum was not waiting for her – she went striding across the grass towards the heavy white door that led into the lighthouse. She raised her hand and knocked loudly with her knuckles, and then with the clenched fist of her hand. Eva was scared. She remembered now, she was scared then. She had been left behind. And so when she finally made it over the gate she started running – like she was running for her life – towards her mum, her mum’s back, her long wild red hair that was whipping around in the wind and when she was about halfway across the grass and had nowhere to hide this terrible, loud, wailing noise came from the top of the lighthouse. She leapt with fright, didn’t know where to run, and then the light was on too, insistent flashes that seemed so bright they could have blinded her. She started to cry. In fact that was the only time she could remember really crying in the all-encompassing way of a child. She collapsed into a pile on the grass. She howled. Eventually her mum came to comfort her, wrapped her up in her arms and sang to her the way she used to, when Eva had been much younger than she was.

No one had answered the lighthouse door.

‘I know where she is,’ Eva said.

Holly looked at her in astonishment.

‘That’s … Damn, I can’t remember the name. But that lighthouse,’ she said. ‘It is at the end of a peninsula. In the northern Highlands of Scotland. The something Ness Lighthouse.’

‘Tarbat Ness?’ Piotr said, showing them the screen of his phone. ‘I think it’s the Tarbat Ness Lighthouse.’

‘Yes,’ Eva said, staring at the postcard and frowning, a thought trying to surface.

‘How do we get there?’ Holly said impatiently.

‘We can take a train.’ Eva started laughing, but there was nothing carefree about it – there was pain behind it, and she needed to stop pretending it wasn’t there.

‘Freida will tell us everything,’ Holly was saying.