Rachel participated in the rest of the conversation in a dazed state that she hoped the solicitor could not detect. Eustace appeared beside her. He circled her calf once and then sat on his haunches looking up at her with unblinking gold eyes.

What will become of us? he seemed to ask. Where will home be now?

‘What will happen now, then?’ Edie asked, when Rachel explained the situation with the will.

‘The solicitor will try to find an heir,’ Rachel said.

‘They won’t find anyone,’ Ron said. ‘We’re the only family he had.’

‘If there’s no natural heir,’ Toby said quietly, ‘the estate will go to the Crown, and they’ll sell any assets.’

‘McCreedy will be rubbing her hands together already, I bet,’ Ron said.

Rachel looked up. ‘Dora?’

‘Oh, aye,’ Ron said bitterly. ‘She’s been trying to buy this place for years. Made Cullen a load of offers that he had no interest in. Gave up for a while, but she’s been at it again in the last year. Last one was only a month or two ago. He didn’t tell you?’

‘No,’ Rachel said. ‘He didn’t.’

‘Probably thought there was no point, what with him being dead set against selling,’ Ron said unhappily. ‘So how could he let this happen? To leave this place for a vulture like that to snap up…’

Rachel crossed to his armchair and took his hand. The old man wrapped both of his around her fingers. ‘Don’t be angry with him, Ron,’ she said softly. ‘He didn’t think he’d be leaving us so soon, that’s all.’

Ron squeezed her hands. ‘I know he wanted you to have this place. I know he did. He didn’t say anything to you at all?’

Rachel freed one of her hands and passed it across her eyes. ‘No, nothing. He was—’ She stopped, suddenly, dropping her hand and looking up at nothing with a frown.

‘What is it?’ Ezra asked. ‘Did he say something?’

Rachel had almost forgotten Cullen’s desperate garbled last words.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid not. Nothing that made any sense, anyway.’

But those last words of Cullen’s played on repeat in her mind, because Rachel had finally become aware of something that had been right in front of her for years.

Nine

There was a papered ceiling in Rachel’s bedroom. It was the only one in the tower. She had noticed it the day she moved in, thinking it odd that someone would take the trouble to paper a ceiling instead of painting it. Then she had supposed that it was to hide uneven plaster. There was plenty of that in the lighthouse. After that, she had not thought about it again. Until now.

In the ceiling. Behind the paper.

Cullen’s words came back to her as she stood in the centre of the tiny room. There was no hint that there was anything on the ceiling behind the wallpaper. The paper could not have been there so very long, because although it looked as if it could do with a refresh, it wasn’t yellowed or peeling. Rachel remembered thinking that the room felt as if it had been given a lick of paint when she moved in, and wondered now if Cullen had put the paper up before she herself had taken residence. Had he wanted to hide something from her?