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abandoned. He had seen his duty elsewhere.
    With memory pulling her farther and farther into the past, she remembered him as the remote, dark-haired schoolboy who had come on holiday to Calders, the boy a little older than herself who had worn an aura of mystery even in those far-off days. When rumour told them that he had gone from school to university, he had passed completely out of her orbit and her one remaining link with Calders had been the Scholarship.
    It was plain that he hadn’t recognised her that morning. He had probably taken her for a village girl brought in to help Kirsty with the chores.
    She smiled faintly at the thought of her unkempt appearance and the smudge on her forehead. No doubt she had looked every inch the part.
    Tossing back her red hair, she faced the wind, determined to forget him. The Daviots and the Christies had never mixed, except once, and that was part of her mother’s sorrow.
    Hurrying, as if by the sheer speed of movement she might escape the conviction, she climbed to the highest point of the cliff where the sea-mews circled and plunged and the puffins and guillemots and shags fussed and quarrelled among the rocks. In the crevasses far below the sea boiled continuously, heaving and swirling like an impatient monster straining at a leash, and clear and cold and white above it, set apart on its jutting promontory, Sterne looked out cross the waves.
    Although it was no longer in use the lighthouse was still in amazingly good repair. As she drew nearer she saw that it had been recently whitewashed and, on closer inspection, that the rail fence had been renewed. She walked round it to where there had been a gate. It was still there, but facing her in all the repulsiveness of fresh black paint on a white board was a notice.
    ‘Private’, it said.
    She read it twice before she could believe it. Someone had fenced off the Light and forbidden the public to use the headland. The white wooden railing marched straight across the promontory, barring her further progress.
    Without second thought she climbed over it and walked briskly towards the cliff. She had always been free to come here, so why not now?
    Out on the cliff edge she was entirely alone. She could sit there and thrash out her problems, readjust her life. Solitude had never daunted her; it was something she loved. The waves’ incessant thunder pounding the rocks beneath her and the cries of the seabirds high overhead were her own wild music, echoing some of the tumult in her heart. High up here above the sea she had nothing to hide. She stood thinking about her lost career, a small, curiously rigid figure silhouetted against the failing light, and then, abruptly, she turned with a new look of purpose in her eyes.
    What was it her mother would have said? ‘If the heavens fall we may find a skylark in our hands.’
    Walking with both hands thrust deeply into the pockets of her coat, she let the wind have its way with her hair, feeling its chill touch against her cheek and the sting of salt on her lips. It was
    difficult to accept defeat.
    When she approached the lighthouse again she stood looking up at it, idly at first, and then with a firmer purpose. The view from the top had always been worth the climb.
    She tried the door, only to find it locked. But that was ridiculous! Nobody had ever forbidden them to go up to the Light. All the revolving mechanism had been dismantled years ago and taken away, but the spiral stone staircase and the iron outside platform were still in existence. She tried the door a second time, shaking the iron ring which served as a handle. “You’ll find it locked.”
    The voice was coldly incisive and she recognised it even before she turned to look at the man standing behind her just inside the boundary fence. Huntley Daviot had followed her through the open gate.
    “I saw the notice,” she agreed as coldly as she could, “but I hardly think it applies. This isn’t the first time I’ve come to