All he had left was two-year-old Beth. But the waste of the deaths made him decide what to do. He brought Beth to the mainland, and managed to get a grant to go to medical school. That’s where he met my mother. They married and had me, but the marriage was a disaster. Everyone was miserable. By the time Dad finished med school, the government decided that leaving the lighthouse to look after itself-even if it was automatic-was also a disaster. The island was still desperate for a doctor, and the caretaker’s cottage was still empty. So Dad and Beth went home.’

Grady’s face was thoughtful. ‘Leaving you behind with your mother?’

‘Of course.’ She shrugged. ‘Can you see my mother living on Petrel Island? But I did spend lots of time there. Every holiday. Whenever I could. Mum didn’t mind. As long as she wasn’t seen as a deserting mother, anything I did was OK by her. She’s not exactly a warm and fuzzy parent, my mother.’

‘I have met her.’

He had. They’d moved fast in four weeks. Morag’s eyes flickered again to his face. Maybe this could work. Maybe he…

But the eyes he was looking at her with were wrong, she thought, confused by the messages she was receiving. He was concerned as he’d be concerned for a patient. He was using a ‘Let’s get to the bottom of this’ kind of voice. He was gentleness personified, but his gentleness was abstract. For Morag, who’d had a childhood of abstract affection, the concept was frightening.

‘So you spent holidays with your father and Beth,’ Grady was saying, and she forced herself to focus on the past rather than the terrifying future.

‘Yes. They were… They loved me. Beth was everything to me.’

‘Where’s your father now?’

‘He died three years ago. He’s buried on the island. That’s OK. He had a subarachnoid haemorrhage and died in his sleep, and it wasn’t a bad way to go for a man in his seventies.’

‘But Beth?’