Mary lay beside me. I had not had the courage to return to my empty room and its shadows. The moment on the stairs played through my head again like a nightmare and Mary’s note still lay clutched in my fist.

I did not want to believe Iskar haunted. In the bright air of the beach later, what had passed the night before seemed dreamlike – I told myself that I had not seen what I thought I had. That some trick of the light had caused that shape to appear on the treads. I told myself that the widows’ whistle had not begun to whine. But even as we walked a part of me was whispering. You lie, it said. You lie.

Mary did not run to explore ahead but remained beside me, her eyes uninterested. I took her hand. Mary’s conviction that she would die. I tried to reject it, but it struck every time, chiming with some deep conviction of my own.

And the widows’ whistle: if there were ghosts, was this how they came? Could it really be possible that there existed an instrument made by human hands that could exert such supernatural power? I dismissed the idea, told myself that it could not be so, but in my head its thin whistling played through my bones like a sick motif.

In the hall, I helped Mary off with her coat. A fire guttered in the grate, exuding the sweet scent of peat, and although it was barely eleven, it was as though night were already falling.

‘Why don’t you go up and change and I will sort something hot for you to drink.’

As always, she obeyed without question, climbing the stairs neither rushing nor dawdling, and I watched her retreat uneasily.

Lunch came but I could barely taste what I put in my mouth.

Miss Gillies broke into my thoughts: ‘Elspeth, I have a favour to ask of you.’ I looked up.

‘I have been going through some of Evangeline’s correspondence and realize that I must follow up a letter I received from an Edinburgh school in relation to William’s education. I really thought I had collected any post of importance from Gulls Cry but it seems not. Although we were not close, I do not feel particularly comfortable being amongst her things and I wondered if you would be kind enough to see if you can find any more letters relating to that in her drawing room desk.’

‘Of course,’ I said.

After lunch, I took the key and made my way back outside. I walked slowly, recalling the last time I had stood in those frigid rooms in search of my charge.

Taking courage, I unlocked the door and walked inside, pushing from my mind the sound of that other step I had heard before. In the hall, I was met only with silence.