I joined her at the mantelpiece and saw that it wasn’t bare like the others. A statuette of Jesus stood beside some sticks of incense, a crucifix and a small vial of water. It looked a bit like a shrine. Rosie picked up the little container of water, and I saw there was a label stuck to it proclaiming it to be holy water and bearing smudged ink writing.

It looked like there were a couple more names, but they were too blurry for me to read.

“I read about this online before we came,” Rosie 125said, beaming down at the little vial. “The last keepers thought the lighthouse was haunted so they had a priest come in.”

She put the holy water back on the mantelpiece and raised her camera to snap a photo of it. The flash bounced off the glass of the mirror, which must have been made specially for the lighthouse. Where else would you find a curved looking glass? Like the one in the downstairs bathroom, this mirror was covered in old marks and a rusty patina that made it hard to see a reflection properly. Not only that but the curved shape of the glass distorted the image anyway, so that it was like looking into a mirror from a funfair attraction.

It made my head hurt and I turned away to glance out of the window instead, but then winced when I saw how toweringly high we were. To make it even worse, someone had scrawled a morbid piece of graffiti on the wall beside it. Just a single word, with an arrow pointing straight at the window:

I shuddered. Who would write such a thing? 126

Rosie said, “It’s a bit gruesome, isn’t it?”

“There’s some weird graffiti in one of the rooms below too,” I said. “Why don’t you take a look at that?”

Rosie grinned. “You just don’t want to be this high up.”

“You’re right, I don’t.”

“So go then. I’m quite happy here on my own. And I’m going to take loads of pictures, so I’ll probably be here a while.”

I sighed. The tower seemed safe enough – there were no gaping floorboards or crumbling walls, so I guessed it would be fine for Rosie to stay up here a bit longer.

“All right. If anyone asks where you are, I’ll cover for you,” I said. “Just don’t spend hours up here, OK?”

I left her to it and made my way downstairs.

When Rosie joined me later that afternoon, she was buzzing with the photos she’d taken. I was only half paying attention when she showed me on her digital camera, but I saw that most of the pictures were of 127the Strangers’ Room. I’d thought Rosie might spend a bit of time reading the logbooks, but when I said so she shook her head.