A load of dead birds lay in a heap near them, and I shuddered when I spotted that they’d all had their heads removed, leaving only long, dangly necks that flopped about in a disturbing way. The hunters were sitting on the ground, each with a bird in their lap, ripping out feathers one by one, until only a pink, wrinkly carcass was left – a meaty lump that seemed like it had never been a living thing at all. The hunters were a good distance away, but the wind was coming in our direction, and it brought the feathers with it. They landed on our food, blanket, clothes and even in our hair. Some of them were bloodstained.

“Nathan,” Kate said at last. “Perhaps we should finish this back at the lighthouse.”

Dad sighed. “All right. Sorry, gang. This was obviously a stupid idea.”

“But Mummy!” Charlie wailed. “I don’t want to go back to the lighthouse!”

“It’ll be the same food,” Kate said, trying to reassure him. “We’ll just put it all on the kitchen table and—”

That was as far as she got before Charlie had a 106meltdown. It was very piercing and annoying, so I kept my head down and helped shove the food back in the basket. A few minutes later, we were on our way, with Charlie keeping up a steady stream of complaints the whole time.

“I don’t like the kitchen,” he insisted. “It makes me feel weird. And there’s someone under the table. They keep trying to grab my leg.”

“Well, I’m sorry, Charlie, but the kitchen is where we’re all going to be eating our meals for the next couple of weeks,” Kate said, sounding exasperated. “So you’ll just have to get used to it and stop making up silly stories.”

Personally I didn’t care where we ate as long as we ate somewhere. But when we got back to the lighthouse, Rosie cornered me before I could follow everyone inside.

“Look at this,” she said, pressing her phone into my hands. “The lighthouse photo has come back.”

I glanced down and saw that there was a blurry photo of the lighthouse set as her lock screen once again.

“You saw me delete it this morning, right?” Rosie went on. “But now it’s back on my phone. I noticed 107it just now when I turned it on. And that’s not all.”

She took the phone off me and tapped the screen a few times before holding it up. Her photo library didn’t look right. Normally it was full of pictures, from selfies with her friends to gloomy landscape shots and arty photos of her food. But now it seemed that every single one of her photos was that same picture of the lighthouse, repeated hundreds of times.

108

Chapter Nine

“There must be something wrong with your phone,” I said. “I mean, that’s the only explanation.”