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Talacre: houses like wheelless caravans crowded in the lee of the glaring grassy dunes; long brick sheds faced the encampment across the soft road. The sheds were penny arcades, souvenir or betting or fish and chip shops, the Boathouse Bingo that boasted Top Prizes and Quality Prizes. Granddad parked near a picture of a pirate with a sack and an eye patch outside the Smugglers Inn, a shed with a line of white arches stuck onto the front, and they made for the beach.
    Beyond the caravans a brambly path led through the dunes. Bits of ruined buildings poked through the undergrowth near the beach: here a foundation, there a chimney stack out of which a crow flapped. As the sand grew softer underfoot granddad began to toil, mopping his forehead with his large handkerchief. He clambered over the last dunes and flopped on a bald patch amid the spiky grass. “You carry on. You’ll stay where I can see you, won’t you, and watch out for horses on the beach.”
    Rowan ran toward the lighthouse, which stood on a pie of concrete surrounded by fallen walls at the edge of the waves. At first the beach was baked in mud that gleamed metallically, then the sand was exposed, embedded with pebbles that grew larger near the rubble. Two short stretches of wall wrapped in wire netting remained, though they seemed to cut off nothing from anything. Families were settling themselves against the dunes, but the only person near the rubble was a fat lady in a flowered dress, her head like a bag of flesh with hardly a bump for a chin, tied tight with a bow at the collar. Granddad waved and lay back on the dune, and Rowan walked around the lighthouse.
    She liked Talacre, where she could play a video game that made her feel she was flying into outer space, but this was better—older, lonelier. She was hoping she would be able to run up to the balcony around the broken lantern and give granddad a surprise. But though the windows in the white shaft were gaping, the doorway was plugged with bricks.
    She sat with her back against the lighthouse and gazed out to sea. Flecks of colour, sandy and chalky, trembled on the horizon of the basking water. Hermione had told her that on a good day you could see the house in Waterloo. All days here were good days as far as Rowan was concerned, but she had never been able to make out the house. She was screwing up her eyes when a voice said “What are you looking for?”
    It wasn’t the fat lady. When Rowan shaded her eyes and glanced toward the redundant wall she saw a girl of about her own age in a long old-fashioned white dress. The girl was holding her chin as if it were a magic lamp and gazing palely at Rowan. “I was trying to see where I live,” Rowan said.
    “Across the water? I come from there too.” The girl moved closer to her but pursed her lips at the prospect of sitting on the concrete. “You wanted to go up the lighthouse, I thought.”
    It sounded like an invitation. “There’s no way in,” Rowan said. “I expect it’s dangerous.”
    “I’ve been up with my father. I could see right home.”
    “Why, does he work there?”
    “A lighthouse-keeper, do you mean?” The girl gave Rowan a look so sharp she felt she had been scratched. “Nothing so paltry. What does your father do?”
    “He’s an electrician. He calls it being a spark.”
    A smirk widened the girl’s small mouth. “Don’t take me for a snob. My father taught me to say good day to everyone, tradesmen included. It keeps them in their place.”
    She must live in Crosby and go to private school, Rowan assumed, and said angrily “Everyone says he’s the best electrician. He takes me with him sometimes, and I’ve seen how careful he is.”
    “Does he ever let you help him?”
    Rowan was about to boast, but a glint in the pale eyes deterred her. “No.”
    “I hope he never does. He’d be breaking the law. He could go to prison if you even helped him without his knowing, and besides, you could hurt yourself.”
    It was none