“I was going to but there’s just something about this room.” She stared down at the shot on her camera. “I don’t know what it is yet… I’m going to go back up there tomorrow and take some photos with the Polaroid.”

When we sat down for dinner later, and Dad asked about our walk, Rosie showed him some of the photos on her camera that she’d taken along the clifftop and the outside of the lighthouse the day before. It seemed our secret was safe for now, although of course we weren’t the only ones who knew about the unlocked tower. I half thought that Will might sneak back once it got dark, but later that night a storm blew in from the sea, meaning that no one could reach the lighthouse. Or leave it.

128

Chapter Eleven

It rained non-stop for two entire days. Not only that but the wind was a gale that sounded like a beast trying to get inside the lighthouse. I could see why the keepers hadn’t liked being stationed here during storms. It made everything seem even more claustrophobic and miserable when you couldn’t go outside. I’d have given anything to be a hundred miles away from Bird Rock, back home, hanging out with my friends, but there was still more than a week to go on this horrible island.

The lighthouse felt crowded with all of us trapped inside, and the shutters rattled and banged so loudly that it became very difficult to sleep. Even when I did manage to doze, my dreams were strange, full of eels, birds and those pale hands. The power cut 129out several times, meaning we had to use candles. Lightning forked through the air.

Rosie couldn’t get enough of the tower, but the last thing I wanted was to be up there in weather like this – it set off my vertigo too strongly. Which was why it especially annoyed me that I had to keep going up to drag Rosie out. She would disappear into the tower for hours, and I could only cover for her for so long. I could hardly say she’d gone for a walk with the storm raging outside.

To make it worse, she’d become more and more preoccupied with the Strangers’ Room, which meant I had to climb almost to the top to fetch her. This happened on the first day of the storm and again on the second. I walked into the room, out of breath from the stairs, to find her just staring at her reflection in the curved mirror.

“Vain much?” I snapped. “You promised you’d only be half an hour this time, and it’s been almost two. Don’t tell me you’ve been staring at yourself in the mirror all this time?”

Rosie looked round at me, startled. “But I haven’t,” she said. “I haven’t been here that long.”