“Nope,” I said sadly, as Cory switched off his phone and put his arm round me. “Nothing.”

A mist was moving in from the sea, turning everything a soft, cold grey. I glanced at the cliff tops. A figure was standing on the very lip of the drop, her shoulders hunched up to her ears. She—if it was a she—stared down at the water without moving.

“Cory, look!”

“What?” His voice rang out too loudly, bouncing off the walls of rock.

“Shh! Up there!”

Cory turned his head, and I knew he’d spotted her by the way he went still.

“She’s very close to the edge.” The panic was rising in my voice. “She shouldn’t be that close; she’ll fall.”

He didn’t answer, but I felt his grip tighten round my shoulder.

“What shall we do?” I whispered.

Cory’s arm slackened and dropped to his side. He didn’t exactly laugh, but his voice took on a relieved lightness.

“It’s gorse,” he said. “It’s a gorse bush.”

I looked again—looked hard—and the figure changed. He was right. I’d noticed it before, in the sane light of day. The hunched shoulders didn’t resemble shoulders once you knew they weren’t; the twist of neck and arms was nothing but a twist of branches.

We ought at least to have smiled; I wondered, even at the time, why we didn’t. I expected Cory to tease me, but he hugged me tenderly and kissed my hair.

“It’s a lonely spot,” he remarked. “I don’t like to think of your coming here alone.”

“But it doesn’t feel like this in the daytime.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s safe.”

I felt a pang of longing for home. At the least, I wanted to be indoors, in a smallish room with closed curtains and a TV.

“I can always come with you,” Cory said, “when you feel like leaving the house? It would do me good to get more fresh air.”

“Oh, but that’s just silly . . .”

I don’t think I said it with enough conviction.

“It’s not silly at all.”

Cory sounded sure.

I tried not to shiver as we stood and watched the mist creeping in, like long, white fingers from the sea.

“I ought to ring Dad,” I said, once we were back in the studio. Cory had already uncorked a bottle of red and returned to his canvas.

“Of course,” he said. “Go ahead.”

“So can I borrow your mobile?”

He passed me a tumbler of wine and gestured with his foot at a rotary dial phone, which sat on the floor in a nest of tangled wires. I’d noticed it before but taken it for bric-a-brac.

“Use that,” he said. “It should still work.”

I picked up the receiver. It was crackly but had a dialling tone.