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Thea clambers down over the rocks and puts everything down while she takes off her shoes. She walks along the damp sand, her bare feet sinking in and leaving perfect footprints. I notice how pale and narrow her feet are: fine, thin toes with pale pink nails. ‘Come and help make the fire,’ she says to me. ‘We need driftwood; want to go and see if you can find some dry stuff?’
    I take my own shoes off and walk along the top of the beach, picking up bits of wood. There isn’t much that’s dry. The wind’s blowing in off the sea. Small brown and white birds scurry along at the edge of the water, so fast they look funny: as if they are scooting along on roller skates. The waves roll in, lines of white breakers curling over and spreading on to the pale sand in loops of lace.
    By the time I’ve walked along the whole length of sand and back, Piers and Thea have made a fireplace out of stones and have started the fire.
    ‘Thanks, Kate,’ Thea says as I dump my armful of wood. She feeds small sticks into the flames, adds bigger bits. I pull my collar up higher and hug my knees for warmth.
    Piers and Finn thread chunks of onion and red pepper and mushrooms on to sticks. ‘It will be ages before the fire’s hot enough for cooking,’ Finn tells me. ‘Hope you’re not in a rush.’
    ‘No,’ I say. ‘I’ve got all day. And all evening. All week, in fact!’
    He laughs. ‘Good.’
    Piers hums a tune as he gets everything ready. I’m a bit in awe of him. He seems grown-up, older than Bonnie or Holly but he can’t be really. He reminds me of someone – that Hugh person on telly, I decide, who cooks outside like this, on a beach, with freshly caught fish and seaweed or whatever. He starts talking to Thea about friends, and films, and some book they’ve been reading about science and religion.
    ‘Are you too cold?’ Finn asks me after a while.
    I am, but I don’t want to say I am. None of them seems the least bit bothered by the cold. I suppose they are used to it.
    ‘Want to run along the beach and back with me?’
    ‘OK.’
    I go slowly to begin with, but it’s fun; a bit like being a child again. The wind whips my hair and the waves make such a racket as they crash on to the sand I can hardly hear what Finn’s saying.
    I’m out of breath way before he is. ‘You go on,’ I say, and he does, in that loping stride he was doing the first time I saw him, pebbles spilling out of his pockets.
    But he doesn’t just run on; he loops back to rejoin me, and we go on side by side together. ‘Seen the ringing stone yet?’ he asks me.
    ‘No. What is it?’
    ‘A lump of granite, from the Ice Age probably, brought here from a different island. Millions of years old. It’s covered in cup marks made by Bronze Age people. Some sort of pre-Druid religious rite, people think. To do with fertility, or blood sacrifice, or star charts or stone worship. No one has a clue really.’
    ‘I think there was something about it in that tiny museum,’ I say. ‘Where is it, exactly?’
    ‘Over on the east coast. You go along the machair for another two miles or so and then cross over to the other side of the island. There’s something extraordinary about it: one of those special places, you know? Where time seems to collapse: the past and the present come together.’
    I look sceptically back at him. ‘Yes?’
    He laughs. ‘Honestly! The look on your face! Anyway, it’s too far to go there now. We’ll go another time. Run back? I’ll race you.’
    ‘Absolutely not,’ I say. But I start running, to get a few seconds’ head start.
    ‘Hey!’ he shouts, and catches up. ‘That’s cheating!’
    ‘It was my only chance.’ I laugh. ‘And I’m not sorry!’
    He matches his pace to mine and we run along the firm sand nearer the water.
    I’m puffed out and hot by the time we’re only halfway back. We walk the rest of the way. He keeps stopping to look at things: a shell, an interesting pebble, a piece of unusual seaweed,