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hour resurrecting the interior of the cottage as best I could. Without fresh water, cleanliness was nearly impossible but I found a broom and a bucket and after I had swept the floor, I drenched the table and windows with sea water. It would have to do. I beat the dusty armchair cushions against the jagged rocks, which gave me an idea for breakfast. When the cottage was as homely as I could make it and had lost most of its fusty smell, I returned to the rocks and used my penknife to loosen two dozen blue-black mussels from their bed of fuzzy seaweed. I stoked the fire and seared the shellfish on the now blazing flames. One by one, they hissed and popped open, revealing delicious salty pouches – the best breakfast I had ever tasted.
    I licked my fingers clean and drank the last of my water. As well as my initial manoeuvres on Creg-ny-Varn Manor, I would have to make sourcing fresh water and food a priority. A trip to the local shop was risky as I was sure that the villagers would recognise me, or at least see the similarity between me and my mother. I was convinced that the scandal surrounding our shameful departure fourteen years ago would still be flowing in and out of their thoughts as regularly as the tide that washed the shore each day.
    My appetite sated by my unusual breakfast and my body warmed thoroughly by the cast-iron stove, I wrapped up in layers of clothing topped off by my dark-green waterproof. If needed, it would at least provide some camouflage for my advance on my family estate. I even considered attaching twigs and leaves to my body so as not to be spotted when stalking the property’s grounds. I giggled at the thought as I picked my way across the debris-littered beach.
    Yesterday’s storm, which had abated before I arrived at the cottage, had delivered an interesting array of gifts on the pebbles. I hauled several pieces of driftwood to the back of the beach to dry out under the shelter of the cliff and pocketed long lengths of orange twine. Tin cans and plastic bags were tangled with moss-green seaweed and I even spotted an unopened packet of crisps bobbing about in the froth.
    I climbed the steep path that led to the cliff top track and, after fifteen minutes of tramping through the wet, springy grass, I was walking along the road towards the village. The sky pressed down like sodden blankets and I took some comfort in this, hoping that the promise of rain would keep other walkers at home or the mist that pooled in the valleys would shroud the road and render me invisible. As I walked under the occasional stark skeleton of a tree deformed by the insistent westerly wind, plops of water dropped onto my tightly-drawn hood, making me feel as if I was in a portable tent. The island’s climate was so dissimilar to my whitewashed cortijo , which baked for three hundred days a year in a white hot sun, that I felt as if I was hydrating, somehow unfurling from over a decade of desiccation.
    A car sped around a corner and swerved to avoid me. I sidestepped onto the verge, narrowly missing being clipped by the vehicle. A visit to the island’s hospital would be a good way to wreck my mission. As tempting as it was to hitch a lift, risking the idle chit-chat that would inevitably ensue was tantamount to knocking on the front door of Creg-ny-Varn and greeting the impostor, Ethan Kinrade, himself. As I continued the thirty-minute walk on foot, I contemplated the man who had stolen my inheritance.
    So far, I knew only two things about him – his name, thanks to Lewis revealing it, and that he was a thief. I guessed at other unattractive traits he was sure to possess and imagined him to be a big man, enormous in fact, with wobbling pale flesh fattened by his easy good fortune and generous living. He would have a servant to tend to his every need, while he sat in a quilted jacket smoking my father’s pipe by the marble fireplace in the library, reading my family’s books. He would rise at ten and have his clothes