His radio crackled before Rhona could explain that she had neither been lowered from a helicopter nor, for that matter, winched up. Merely stepped out of the rescue chopper onto a frozen Loch A’an.

‘It is a body,’ Lee reported, having answered the radio call. ‘A young guy, so definitely not Jake.’ He was looking at Rhona, awaiting her decision on how exactly she wanted to get on site.

Her mind made up, Rhona turned to Jamie. ‘I’d definitely like to take a look, if you’re okay with taking me down?’

Jamie, perhaps sensing her apprehension, joked with Rhona as he kitted them both up.

‘So you enjoyed your first abseil?’

‘I wouldn’t say enjoyed. It was Chrissy’s idea that we should do it, and she’s pretty persuasive, ‘Rhona told him. ‘I do remember vowing never to do it again.’

‘You can change your mind, you know,’ Jamie offered, with a look of concern. ‘Wait for the chopper?’

Rhona shook her head. Her insides didn’t relish the prospect of dropping 180 feet down a cliff face, but her curiosity about the body on the beach currently held the upper hand.

‘Besides, I trust you not to drop me,’ she said, as much to convince herself as to reassure Jamie. ‘What about my bag?’

‘We’ll lower it down after you.’

The mist enveloped them. Unable to see how far she had to fall was, Rhona decided, somewhat reassuring. And Lee was right when he’d said how sheltered the Kilt Rock was.

‘Unless, of course, we get high winds from the west, when the waterfall next to the lookout is simply blown away, never reaching the ground.’

Rhona tried not to envisage herself in such a situation as she began her descent, firmly gripped in Jamie’s arms. And for the moment, thankfully, there was little movement in the air, just the damp fingers of mist on her face and the sound of the sea breaking on the black rocks below.

As her feet eventually touched the ground, the mist began to thin and, glancing up, Rhona realized just how far she’d descended.

‘Okay?’ Jamie said as he released her.

‘Thank you for my life,’ Rhona said with a relieved smile.

‘I was really looking after my own,’ Jamie joked back.

Freed now from her harness, Rhona took stock of where she was.

Looking up and to her left, she could just make out the lights of the rescue vehicles behind the railing that encircled the viewpoint. To her right, Jamie had explained, lay the steep gully used by the MRT to access the foreshore.

‘The way I brought you down was easier, and quicker,’ he added.

Having orientated herself and retrieved her bag, Rhona now followed Jamie across the jumble of rocks to his two teammates.

Introduced by Jamie as Scott and Allan, they in turn led her to the cordon they’d set up around the body.