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reach the age of sixteen and have so little self-control?
    Angela had been taking her turn working behind the bar – all the field centre staff did a stint on open evenings – and had refused to serve Poppy a drink. Poppy had been clearly drunk, but Jane suspected the decision not to allow her one more can of lager had been a deliberate provocation. Angela disliked the girl and disliked Maurice’s attention being distracted by her. The evening was winding up and perhaps Angela was a little bored. She did like a drama.
    So suddenly Poppy started shouting abuse. She leaned across the bar and yelled at her stepmother: ‘You have no fucking right to tell me what to do.’ She took a full glass of beer that had been standing next to her and flung it at Angela. Jane saw with some satisfaction that it went all over the famous hair.
    The lingering guests moved quickly into the lobby to collect their coats and change their shoes. They were clearly embarrassed. Jane went with them to say goodbye, to hold the door and warn them to take care on the drive south. Jimmy Perez was the last to go. He seemed intrigued by the scene being played out in the common room and stood watching through the open door. It took Mary to call him away. There was a flurry of thanks. Mary shouted back to her: ‘You must come and have dinner with us in Springfield before Jimmy and Fran go home.’ Then came the sound of a car engine over the gale, headlights showing it was still pouring with rain.
    When all the guests had gone, Jane waited for a moment. The wind caught the heavy outside door and it began to bang. The storm must have changed direction. Still westerly, which the birdwatchers hated, but with some north in it. She pulled it to again and locked it. The common room was quiet. She supposed Maurice and his strange dysfunctional family had gone through the kitchen to their flat.
    She began the task of clearing up. The visitors would still want their breakfast the next day. Usually Maurice would have stayed behind to help her, but she knew he would have other things on his mind. Ben, the assistant warden, seemed to have rushed off too. Jane stacked plates into the dishwasher and cleared the glasses from the common room. The tables could wait for the following day. She felt oddly happy. Angela had miscalculated. It hadn’t been clever to wind up Poppy so she made a show in public. Maurice wouldn’t like that. Then there came a horrible thought, worm-like, entering her brain and refusing to leave. She couldn’t let Maurice and Angela separate. If they were to split up Angela would stay at the North Light. She was the warden, the famous naturalist, the person who pulled in the punters. Anyone could take on Maurice’s role. And there would be no place for Jane in Angela’s new world.
    Chapter Six
    That night Perez slept immediately, untroubled by memories of his first lover or anxieties about his current one. It was as if the first ordeal was over. Fran had survived the party, had even enjoyed it. In the car on their way back to Springfield she’d said what a wonderful evening it had been. ‘Thank you so much, Mary, for organizing it.’ And Mary, crawling at ten miles an hour as the wind buffeted the car, leaning forward for a better view of the road, had turned briefly to them and beamed.
    He woke before it was light. The storm still there in the background, taken for granted now. There was a knock on the door, his father’s voice as quiet as he could manage. ‘Jimmy, you need to get up.’
    He thought there must be some community disaster. He remembered being called from his bed as a young man, when old Annie had fallen ill and they’d needed an ambulance flight in the middle of the night. They’d lit fires along the airstrip to mark the way for the plane to come in, all of the island men working together, the women left behind to mind the bairns.
    Fran stirred but she didn’t wake. In the kitchen his father was making tea. He was wearing