‘Well, I’ve got some work to do too,’ Toby had told her, struck by a strange need to justify himself. ‘I needed somewhere quiet. Newton Dunbar seemed like a good place.’

She’d laughed at that. ‘Well, yes. It’s definitely quiet. What line of work are you in, Mr…?’

By that point, Toby had regretted the urge that had made him say hello in the first place, but there was no way he could rebuff her now without seeming horribly rude.

‘My name’s Toby. Hollingwood.’ He’d added his surname after a split second of hesitation. ‘I’m a writer.’

To his relief, McCreedy’s face hadn’t registered recognition.

‘Well,’ she’d said, ‘if you’re writing about the lighthouse, you’ll find the tower in a bad state. It’s becoming an eyesore, really. Full of dreadful clutter.’

‘Isn’t it a second-hand bookshop?’

McCreedy dismissed his question as if she hadn’t heard it. ‘You know the story, don’t you? The builder died in a fire. James MacDonald was his name.’

‘In the lighthouse?’ Toby, startled, had looked instinctively towards the tower.

‘No, no. In the big house. This was back in the early 1800s, not long after the folly was built. There’s barely anything left to see of it now. It was his mad wife, you know. Set fire to the place and burned him to death inside.’

‘How very gothic.’

‘Oh yes,’ McCreedy had said, with the specific kind of gloating tone habitually present in the regular gossip. ‘I own the ruins of the house and the land around them now. The walls are mostly overgrown, but what’s left is still as black as tar. The flames could be seen for miles, so they say, and the wife danced on the lawn as the place burned. Perfect material for a novel,’ she’d smiled.

Toby had wondered if Dora McCreedy had ever seen a life burn and if she’d smile so if she had. He suspected she might, and thus his impression of her soured further.

‘Not my kind of writing,’ was all he’d said.

And so this past night his dreams had been flushed through with raging fire, as well as the usual miasma of gunfire, explosions and exodus. He’d woken suddenly into darkness and now here he was, staring at an unfamiliar ceiling. Experience told Toby there would be no more sleep for him that night, no matter that it was barely 5 a.m. He got up, pulled on sweats and a jumper, and went downstairs in a house so quiet that the silence rang in his ears. The kitchen was modern, as white and minimalist as the rest of the house, with a wide glass door sliding open onto a deck that flowed into the garden. He stood staring at the darkness outside, his reflection set against it like a ghost floating in light.

Inactivity had always been his downfall. He didn’t know what to do. Or rather, he knew what he had to do, but could not find a way to begin. Sylvie had told him she could get him a book deal if he wrote his memoirs, but that meant deciding where to start, and then actually starting. Toby was more used to reacting to an event and then describing it to an audience, putting it into context. He had no idea how to put his own life in context, to explain himself to others, to make himself understood. Lately he could not even do that to himself. What, When, Where, How, Why – the five questions every piece of journalism had to answer or it had failed in its basic function. Toby could not even answer the first of them, not right now, not when there were so many other stories still ringing in his head, so many lives and events that 300 words, 500 words, 1,000 words had failed to encapsulate with any degree of completion. Or, he’d frequently feared even at the time of writing them, compassion.