I hold her tightly. ‘It’s OK,’ I whisper. ‘We did it.’

‘He isn’t coming back,’ she says. She pulls back to look at me and I see that she doesn’t mean Liam.

‘Will?’ I ask.

She nods, tears falling down her cheeks. I soothe her. She swallows hard and wipes her arm across her face.

‘Here,’ I say to her.

She looks down. I’m holding out her engagement ring. She takes it, her face stricken, before she fights off the sadness and smiles at me through her tears. She slips the ring onto her finger. ‘Thank you,’ she says. I unclasp the Celtic cross and give that back to her too. Her bottom lip wobbles, but only for a moment, and then her expression hardens.

‘You should go,’ I say.

‘I know,’ she answers. ‘But what about you?’ She glances down at the body.

‘I’ll be fine,’ I tell her, and I mean it.

Mia and I hug one last time before she walks off through the woods towards the cliffs, where she’ll find her boat and pack her things and leave, like the ghost she is.

In a few weeks’ time we’ll meet again. She’s given me back my life and I’ll give her back her dog.

Chapter Thirty-Six

I watch Mia walk away, heading for the cliffs, and then disappear from view into the first tinge of dawn light.

When I turn back around, I see a man standing a few feet away. I let out a gasp of fright. I recognise him instantly. It’s the man from the pub who was watching me strangely and who told me about the island being haunted. He’s the man who’s been squatting in the castle, whose boat and gun we stole. How long has he been standing there? What did he see? Did he watch Mia and me together talking over the body?

‘What happened?’ he asks gruffly, nodding at Liam’s body.

My heart rattles like a freight train. I knew there was a risk if Mia and I kept on with our plan once we knew that he was on the island too, but it was a risk we had to take. We couldn’t back out. I did my best to keep Liam away from the castle, not wanting him to blame the wrong person, and I hoped that the man would steer clear of us too.

‘There was an accident,’ I stammer to the man. ‘He stood in an animal trap.’

He narrows his eyes at me. ‘That’s odd, that,’ he says. ‘Because I know this island back to front and there wasnae any trap here yesterday.’

Oh god. I can feel the tremor starting in my ankles, riding up to my knees. He glances at his shotgun, which I’m holding in my hand.

‘That’s mine,’ he says. ‘You stole it. And my boat.’ He reaches for it and snatches it out of my hand.