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brushed through the bluebells in the windblown grass.
    And Mark, I knew, was walking with the memories.
    I had memories of my own to keep me company. My mother, loving history as she did, had loved the romance of the Beacon, ancient relic of the days when there had been a chain of signal fires on hilltops all along the coast of Britain, standing ready to be lit in times of trouble. They had served a double purpose, calling everyone who saw them to come out and take up arms against the enemy, while at the same time swiftly sending warning word to London of approaching danger. In Elizabethan times, this beacon at Trelowarth had been used to pass the signal when the sails of the Armada were first spotted from the shore.
    In those days, the Beacon would have been a sight to see—a high stone table, higher than a man, much like the Neolithic cromlechs that one still saw perched on hillsides in this area, but with a pile of kindling wood, perhaps, stacked on top of it in readiness. My mother’s words had painted such a clear and vivid picture of it in my mind that when we’d come up here on picnics I had always felt the urge to keep a sharper watch on the horizon for a stealthy Spanish sail, and sometimes glanced from left to right along the coast to see if I could spot another beacon fire flaring in the distance.
    I still felt a small tug of that same feeling now as we came to the top of the field, to the level place scattered with old weathered stones that had tumbled into a rough circle and gave little hint of their earlier purpose, except for the stone at the centre that lay like a low table, cracked at one end.
    The view from here was wide and unobstructed—I could see the whole unbroken line of coast, headland to headland, the waves beating white on the black cliffs and dark shingle beaches, and the sea deep blue today beneath a warmly glinting sun.
    I set the box that held Katrina’s ashes on the table stone and looked at Mark, who looked at me.
    And then he reached into the rucksack he had carried up with him and brought out three small paper cups, the kind you find near water coolers, and a dark green bottle. ‘We should do this right,’ he said.
    ‘What is that?’
    ‘Scrumpy. When Katrina and I came up here, we always brought a bottle with us.’
    ‘Scrumpy?’
    ‘Cider. With a kick.’ He filled a cup and set it on the wooden box, then poured two more and handed one to me, and raised his up as though to make a toast. ‘Here’s to…’ he said, then faltered. ‘Well, to hell with it,’ he finished off, and drained the cup.
    I drank mine too, and Mark poured out the third cup on the box itself before he stepped aside and gave a nod to me. ‘Go on, then.’
    With uncertain hands I flipped the latch that held the box shut. ‘There was something I was going to read.’
    Mark looked at me and waited.
    ‘From The Prophet ,’ I explained. ‘Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet . There’s a passage about death that Katrina always liked. She read it at our parents’ funeral.’
    I had crammed the folded paper in a pocket, and I had to tug it out and spread it smooth against the blowing breeze.
    ‘“For what is it to die,”’ I read, ‘“but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun? And what is it to cease breathing, but to… but to…”’ And there my voice trailed off and would not carry on, and Mark reached over for the page and gently took it from my hand, and went on with the reading in his steady voice. I turned my face towards the sea and let my eyes be dazzled by the brightness of the water while Mark finished off the passage and came down to the last lines:
    ‘“And when you have reached the mountaintop, then you shall begin to climb.
    And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.”’
    It seemed the perfect time then, so I tipped the box and let the ashes spill.
    Beside me, very quietly, Mark told them, ‘Go and dance now.’
    And they caught the wind and