As he slid down the escarpment towards the beach, he thought he heard a scream. He stopped partway, clung to the gorse and let out his own weedy wail; it was carried on the wind as the prickles pierced his skin, his face pressed into the cliff, terrified. The night was dark and the wind off the ocean was strong. He had no protection from the elements and although it was less than a hundred yards to the bottom and the promise of shelter behind a rock, fear froze him to the cliffside. He could barely move.

There was an answering cry. He recognised the voice – was it Angela’s ghost? It came again, closer, and the blood drained from his face into his boots. He was sick and dizzy with fear. It wasn’t Angela, it was her daughter, the girl McGuffey had once promised to him, almost twenty years ago. Sarah’s ghost. Jay lost control, clung on, blubbering and now wailing to himself. ‘Please leave me alone.’

He turned to look at the ocean instead, but there was no escape. He could see her face in the clouds of the night sky; she was coming towards him, forbidding, terrifying, turning the blood in his veins to ice, and she was threatening him. His fingers began to lose their grip and his feet pushed and scrambled against the slippery, scaly cliffside. His legs flailed, desperately trying to secure a foothold, but it was no good. As he grunted and gasped, his eyes bulging with the effort, his fingers, locked and unresponsive, failed him. The gorse ripped through his hands and, calling out like a baby, he tumbled all the way down.

‘About fecking time.’

McGuffey was standing at the bottom, leaning on a blackthorn stick and swaying as he stretched one hand out onto a rock. ‘You just missed that rock. Dead, you would have been, if you’d hit it.’ His voice was flat and far weaker than Jay remembered.

Jay looked up from the ground, nursing his head, and gasped, ‘Did you hear her? Did you hear that noise?’ He raised himself to his knees, then pushed himself up with his hands and scrambled onto his feet. He had never known McGuffey not to carry a gun and you never left yourself in a vulnerable position with a madman like him. His cap had landed a few feet away and he grabbed at it and pushed it back onto his head.

‘Come into the cave, we can’t be seen there,’ McGuffey said.

‘No one’s in the cottages,’ Jay hissed. ‘They’re all at Malone’s.’

Miraculously, the wicker lobster pot was still in place and he shrugged it from his shoulders. He felt braver now that he had company. ‘I brought you food. Cake, and meat too.’

McGuffey could smell it and his stomach began to rumble. ‘Did you bring water? I can’t get up to the well.’

‘I did.’ Jay was feeling pleased with himself and was almost grinning now.