The sunlight barely penetrates among the trees and the occasional beam that slips between the dark branches reminds me of light shining through the windows of a church, as does the hushed stillness. I take deep breaths, filling my lungs with fresh air, revelling in the sense of freedom that’s germinated in me, just by being here among nature. It’s as if I’ve left the past behind and I’m taking my first teetering steps on a new path. We follow a winding route through the forest; I’m not sure which direction we’re heading in exactly. It’s dank and mossy and there’s no real trail. Very quickly, I feel lost.

‘This way,’ Liam says, orienting us without a problem.

After a few more minutes, we break into a clearing and I pull up abruptly, stumbling into Liam. Up ahead is the castle – but it looks nothing like it did in the photograph. It’s a ruin: fire has gutted it almost completely, and it lies before us like a blackened, half-eaten carcass.

‘Guess that’s why they didn’t mention it on the website,’ Liam laughs.

I stare up at it and suppress a shudder. Though it’s only five o’clock in the afternoon and won’t be dark for ages, the broken timbers of the roof cast a long shadow and I remember the conversation back in the pub – all that talk of ghosts. Did someone die in the fire perhaps?

‘I wonder how it burned down,’ I say. ‘And if anyone got hurt.’ I think of the photograph of Nancy, Andrew and Elliot.

We walk along the edge of the clearing, circumnavigating the castle at a distance. It’s four storeys tall, but the roof has collapsed in places and the rafters poke up like painfully splintered ribs. One wing of the castle has been totally destroyed, but the other side is still mainly intact – though many of the windows are smashed and probing tendrils of ivy have snaked their way inside.

The ground floor windows look to be boarded up with plywood, though I can’t think why. Perhaps kids sometimes come over from the mainland, I muse, looking for some illicit fun. Or more likely it’s to stop animals from going inside and making it their own. It seems odd that it was never torn down, but perhaps it’s too expensive to bother, and maybe there’s no point. Eventually nature will claim it; it’s already starting to.