Finally I stopped on the path, exhausted. I hoped that Dad and Kate were out doing the same thing over on the other side of the island. Maybe they’d already found Rosie, and she was safely back with them? Perhaps I should go back to the lighthouse now and make sure? The thought of returning without my sister was awful, but she could already be there. And I was getting thoroughly sick of the fog and the quiet, and the sense that there were hundreds of shiny bird eyes looking at me silently from the darkness. In the end I decided to check the lighthouse. If she wasn’t there, then I’d come straight out again.

Only … somehow … I’d got lost. The fog had lifted enough for me to see a metre or so in front of me, 166but the path curled in the opposite direction to what I’d been expecting. And although I followed it for quite a long way, there was no sign of the lighthouse, which surely should have appeared by now. How had I managed to get turned around?

I continued to follow the path, not knowing what else to do, when – suddenly – a figure appeared up ahead. He was facing away from me, and I thought it was Dad, but then I realized this man was wearing a dark woollen coat that reached to his knees, along with a stiff-peaked cap. Dad didn’t own anything like that. It looked like a uniform. Perhaps the kind a lighthouse keeper might wear… For a wild moment, I wondered whether Rosie had found the outfit in one of the lighthouse cupboards and persuaded Dad to dress up in it to give me a scare. Perhaps this was just an elaborate prank, and Dad and Kate were in on it too…

But the man before me was shorter and stockier than Dad. He stood completely still, all alone in the middle of the fog, staring out at nothing with his hands loose by his sides. I tried to tell myself that he might be one of the guga hunters, yet I knew somehow that he wasn’t. All of a sudden, I really 167didn’t want him to turn round and see me.

My breath came in shallow gasps as I staggered back the way I’d come, only to find that there was another person on the path up ahead. A woman this time, dressed in a long, old-fashioned white nightdress, with dark hair that reached to the small of her back. She was barefoot, absolutely motionless, and stood facing away from me. She could almost have been a statue if it wasn’t for the breeze stirring her nightdress and hair. I felt the same sense of wrongness pouring off her that I had from the man. Was she a ghost? Was that why the sight of her felt so strange?