Edie stilled. Ezra pressed the wipe over the tiny cut before dabbing away the blood that had run from the wound.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘It’ll be fine now. I don’t think it even needs a plaster.’

He nodded, and finally let her go. Ezra stood and turned away to wash his hands at the sink. Rachel was still looking askance at the two of them and Edie just wanted to be somewhere – anywhere – else.

‘I’d better go,’ she said, and was at the door before Ezra had turned back from the sink.

‘Thanks for the help,’ he called after her, and if Rachel hadn’t been there, perhaps Edie would have turned and said that it was nothing, which was true, or perhaps she would have said thank you, which would have been for the unexpected thoughtfulness of him building his goat a pen. Instead she kept going, until she was out of his sight and back on her own territory, safe again from the ongoing peculiarity of this sudden, unwanted and infuriating equilibrium between them.

Thirty-Nine

The information of which Alan Crosswick had got wind was that there were finally plans to replace the much-vaunted A96 with a motorway that would provide a faster connection between Aberdeen and Inverness. The mooted new road would cut much closer to the northern edge of the Cairngorms National Park, which, though sure to be controversial, would mean a straight run onto the A9, instead of the slow, faintly circuitous route currently in use and constantly complained about, particularly by business travellers. This new road would pass within half a mile of Great Dunbar. It would take just one more road to make Dora McCreedy’s parcel of land in Newton Dunbar a lot more attractive than it was now. A road that would have no option but to run straight over the hill on which the lighthouse currently stood.

The plans were still in the very early stages, but it was clear that certain people had been given, or had somehow gained, early access to the planner’s data. Even before he’d looked more closely, Toby was willing to bet that Dora McCreedy was one of those people, a conviction compounded when, during his latest lesson with Gilly, the girl complained about the developer hanging around outside the lighthouse.

‘She’s acting like she owns the place,’ Gilly grumbled. ‘She was here again earlier, wandering about with that weird guy with the porn film equipment.’

‘I’m sorry, what?’ Toby asked. ‘The what equipment?’

‘It’s a tripod with this weird thing on top like a waterproof camera. It’s the same guy I saw the day she destroyed my tent, and I’m pretty sure he was there the night she caught me in Edie’s garden, too.’

Toby thought for a moment and then googled images of surveying equipment, turning the screen around so that Gilly could see it. ‘Something like this?’

‘Yes!’ Gilly said. ‘I swear, if that woman ends up owning the lighthouse, I’ll… I’ll…’