“Oh. I’ve lost something important. I’m just checking to see if it’s in here.”

I stared at the tins piled up on the worktop and the almost frantic way in which Dad was pulling out more. Suddenly the logbook came back to me – the one that mentioned a keeper who was always looking for something, but didn’t seem to know what 234he’d lost. Could this be happening with Dad now? Might he be searching for Rosie without realizing that’s what he was doing?

“What have you lost, Dad?” I asked.

He froze suddenly, a tin clasped in his hand. Then he turned round, and there was an odd look of confusion on his face. “I haven’t lost anything, Jess.” He frowned. “I thought I had but … I must have made a mistake.”

Perhaps his subconscious did remember Rosie on some level after all. But that still wasn’t much help to me.

“What do you think about the children leaving the lighthouse?” Kate pressed. “Given what Jess has just told us?”

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Dad said, staring vaguely into the cupboard.

Kate looked a bit annoyed by Dad’s feeble response, and I didn’t blame her. “I think we should talk about this more later,” she said firmly. “But for now I’m going to tell Charlie to stay inside. And could you put all those tins back where you found them, please? I had them organized in a system.”

She went off, leaving me in the kitchen with 235Dad. He was still just standing there, staring into the empty cupboard.

“Dad?” I finally said. “Are you OK?”

He hardly seemed to hear me, and when I repeated the question he just waved his hand in a distracted way and said, “Not now, Jess.”

There didn’t seem much point trying to interact with him. As usual, he was no use to me at all, so I took myself off to the bathroom. After being in the middle of the gannets like that, I felt as if I could smell them on my clothes and skin, and I desperately needed to wash it off.

To my irritation, the shower wasn’t working properly – barely a dribble of water came out – so I ran the bath instead. It looked like no one else had used it since we’d been here because I had to clear out the dead bugs first, and the taps squeaked when I turned them on. A whole load of rust-coloured water came out before it finally ran clear.