‘You’re up early,’ he says, kissing my cheek.

I hand him a cup of coffee. He notices the heart shape I’ve tried to draw in the froth with cinnamon and laughs. He takes a sip and nods in appreciation. ‘That’s a fairly decent coffee. Maybe you could train as a barista. Though,’ he adds, ‘it would be a waste of your talents.’

I’m about to ask him what he wants for breakfast – I spied all the ingredients for an English breakfast in the fridge and my appetite is stirring and demanding bacon – but he’s already heading towards the front door. ‘Shall we take it outside, sit on the beach?’ he suggests.

His fear seems to have dissipated overnight. He must have resolved in his mind that it wasn’t a person he saw after all; definitely an owl. That, or he’s pretending in order to make me feel better. Either way, I decide to go along with it.

I nod, pick up my own cup of tea and hurry after him. He undoes the dead bolts on the front door, and we step outside to find that the morning is fresh and mainly clear, with only a few clouds skidding along overhead.

‘Still no sign of that stor—,’ Liam begins to say, with a slight scoff, but he trails off, his gaze falling to the path in front of us. I follow it and see there’s dirt traipsed all over the flagstones. Then I see the geraniums in the flowerbeds are crushed underfoot, as though someone has stomped through them.

‘What the hell?’ Liam mutters under his breath. He walks over to take a closer look. There are footprints in the soil right in front of the window – the same window he thought he saw someone staring through last night.

‘Oh my god,’ I whisper, looking down at them. ‘There was someone looking in.’ It wasn’t an animal, and we weren’t imagining things. ‘Someone else is here,’ I whisper in shock. ‘On the island.’

Liam bends to take a closer look. ‘Looks like a man’s eight or nine. Boots not trainers,’ he mutters. He stands up and stares at the window. ‘He must have stood here last night, looking in at us.’

I swallow, feeling ill at the thought, and starting to shake with fear. I can’t stop staring at the footprints – irrefutable proof that we aren’t alone on the island.

Liam glances around, following the tracked dirt down the path. ‘He ran off via the beach.’

‘Look!’ I say, pointing at the window, noticing something. Someone has etched random markings into the glass; symbols that don’t make sense, like some ancient runes.

‘Why would someone do that?’ I ask, puzzled.

‘Was it there before?’

I shake my head. ‘No. I would have noticed when I drew the curtains last night.’