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of her business, Rowan thought, feeling vulnerable and responsible for him. “You’re here with your father, are you?” she said.
    The girl drew herself up stiffly and stared straight into the sun, her shadow falling across Rowan as if her sudden gloom had been made visible. “I don’t know where he is.”
    Rowan would have sympathised, except that she sensed more emotion brooding under the words than she might be able to cope with. The fat lady was being tugged away along the beach by two children, a girl whose mouth was green with lollipop and a boy wearing only a cowboy hat. “With your mum, then?” Rowan suggested. “Is that her?”
    “The woman with the filthy children? I trust you’re joking.”
    It sounded like a threat, even though the girl was still gazing into the sun. “Where do you go to school?” Rowan asked without especially wanting to know.
    “I don’t need to. There’s not a teacher in the world who couldn’t learn from my father.”
    Rowan sensed that scoffing might be dangerous. “I’ve got to go now. My granddad said I had to stay where he could see me.”
    The girl turned and gazed at her. Her eyes seemed bright and colourless as the sun she had been staring at. “You needn’t go yet. Stay with me.”
    “No, I can’t.” Rowan put her hands on the hot rough concrete and tried to push herself to her feet, but the unblinking brightness of the girl’s eyes made her feel dim and limp. The gleam of a gold chain that hung around the girl’s neck and down inside her dress pricked the edge of Rowan’s vision, and she managed to look away. She struggled to her feet and almost sprawled on the concrete. Her head felt fragile as a bubble, her legs were wavering, the dunes were shrinking away from the lighthouse. It was only the heat, she told herself, and granddad would know what to do to make her feel better. She heaved one foot forward to keep herself up.
    “Very well, if you must,” the girl said as Rowan reached out a hand to support herself on the giant neon tube of the lighthouse, which appeared to be yards away. Her palm pressed against the flaking whitewash, and the world seemed to fall together around her; the dunes came back. She made her way carefully down the concrete, and realised that the girl was watching her with an emotion Rowan couldn’t identify: surprise, perhaps, but not only surprise. “Will you be my friend when we get home?” the girl said.
    An impression of loneliness passed over Rowan like a lingering shadow. “If I see you,” she said.
    “Don’t worry, I’ll see you. I’ll bring something I think you’ll like.”
    Rowan stepped off the concrete onto the soft sand. “What’s your name, anyway?”
    “Vicky,” the girl said absently, staring past her at the dunes where Rowan’s grandfather lay. Rowan looked to see if he was beckoning, but he was still on his back. He blinked himself awake as she went towards him. “That’s right, stay where I can see you,” he mumbled, and dozed off. Rowan set about searching for pebbles she could use to decorate her patch in Waterloo once he had landscaped the garden. She hadn’t noticed when Vicky had moved away, but presumably the girl had taken off her dress: there was nobody in white along the miles of beach.
    The next time granddad wakened, he said they should be heading back for lunch. At the cottage Rowan learned that daddy had to fix someone’s electricity and wouldn’t be coming to collect her until early evening. After lunch she read the books her grandparents had bought her, and had time for a sandwich tea before the car came.
    Daddy picked her up and hugged her and then shook hands with the grown-ups. “Has she behaved herself? You can keep her if you like, Hermione,” he teased, then seemed to feel he’d been thoughtless. Rowan gathered her suitcase and her bag of pebbles, and they went out to the car.
    Once he was driving he didn’t say much. She liked just being with him, gazing out at the