‘All right,’ Edie said. ‘Come tomorrow at three.’

For a moment she thought Gilly might actually smile. Instead she nodded and turned for the door. She reached for the handle and paused, looking at the candles they had extinguished together.

‘Get some holders,’ she said. ‘Next time I might not be around.’

Edie said nothing, just watched as Gilly climbed the gentle slope of her garden. She disappeared into the gloom when she reached the gate, nothing visible of her but the amorphous shape of Ezra’s coat. Edie went to the windows and drew down her blinds, disturbed by the idea that she’d never before thought of the fact that when she worked down here in the dark, anyone on the hill would be able to see what she was doing.

Although she supposed she had to be grateful for that tonight.

Three or four days out of the week, Ezra liked to run. Keeping his fitness up when he’d been younger and working long, hard days (and nights) on the rigs had not been a problem, but post-retirement he had soon realized that it would fade fast if he didn’t get a handle on it. He had no intention of slipping into frailty or poor health in his later years, at least not without a fight. Running and a little weight work at home had seemed an easy and relatively cheap way of keeping his heart rate up and maintaining his muscle tone in decent working order. He had a route that took him around the village, along the riverbank, turning back at the bridge and finishing with a circuit of the hill on which the lighthouse stood before arriving back at his own door. A few years ago he would have extended his run into the forest that edged Cullen’s property, but that had stopped once Dora McCreedy had put up her statement fence. Instead, Ezra hugged the perimeter of it as he ran, the slope a final hard gradient as he turned back towards home.

He hadn’t come across anyone on this route since the fence had gone up, which was why this evening he took note of two figures standing in the almost-dark on the lighthouse side of the fence. One of them was Dora McCreedy and the other was a man he’d never seen before. Ezra knew the apparatus on the tripod he had set into the ground beside him, though. It was a setting-out laser, a groundworks rotary with a cross line that was used for measuring property sites prior to the start of development. Ezra could see that it wasn’t directed across McCreedy’s own land, but towards the hill – and the lighthouse.

He slowed to a stop. ‘Hi,’ he said.

McCreedy smiled at him. ‘Out for an evening run?’

Ezra glanced down at himself, spreading his hands, because the answer was surely obvious. ‘Yeah. What are you doing?’

‘I’m not sure that’s any of your business, is it?’

‘You’re on my friend’s property,’ Ezra pointed out. ‘I’d say it’s as much my business as anyone else’s, given that he’s not here.’