She wondered when the grief would hit her because at the moment, all that her mind could contain was a dull kind of fog that made the rest of the world unreal. She spent the bus journey home staring out of the window, but was paying so little attention that when the sign for Newton Dunbar blinked up on the display, she almost missed her stop. She climbed the hill to the lighthouse, which was lit up from inside even on the ground floor, despite it being far past closing time. This made her wonder who was in there, and then all at once it occurred to her that she was going to have to tell everyone that Cullen was dead, and she had no idea how to do that, was not at all prepared with what to say or how to say it.

Rachel stopped on the dim path. For a split second she considered not going back at all. She had her wallet with her and a few hundred pounds in the bank. The lighthouse was not hers and she possessed nothing valuable. She could walk away now, leave this very moment, start anew somewhere else. Cullen was what had kept her here, and now Cullen had gone, and so too could she. It would be as if she’d never been here at all, as if this had been just an interlude, a transient moment in an insubstantial life. She didn’t have to face what was waiting for her behind those doors. There were no ties to keep her here, there was nothing she owed, nothing she would be taking, still less that she would be leaving behind.

She could go, as easily as she had arrived.

Rachel hesitated, the chill of the night seeping through her thin jumper. She shivered, and started to walk again, up the hill, towards the only home she had. When she stepped beneath the porch she paused, one hand against the smooth weathered wood, a structure they had all had a hand in building. Then she went through the doors and into the bookshop beyond.

Two faces looked up from the armchairs and for a moment Rachel was confused. But it wasn’t Cullen sitting there with Ron, of course it wasn’t. It was Toby. He stood as she entered and from his expression she understood that he had already read the truth in her face, and moreover that the advent of death was not new to him. Then there was Ron. Rachel still didn’t know how to do what she had to do, and so decided that the best way was immediately and quickly. She crossed the floor, her hands outstretched, and took both of Ron’s in both of hers. She knelt beside the chair.

‘Cullen’s gone,’ she said, her voice clear but somehow, to her ears, absent, as if she were speaking the words somewhere else, to someone else, and perhaps it was not even really truly her voice speaking them. ‘Ron, I’m so sorry. They tried. He tried. But he’s gone.’