Mount Gower and Mount Lidgbird, forming the southern end of Lord Howe Island, were not that high as mountains go, but what they lacked in height they made up for in many ways, Davina discovered, as she stood without her shoes on a wet grassy point opposite them. Dark, sheer and austere and rising straight out of the sea, with a threatening sky behind them and a rainbow shimmering across them, they quite took her breath away. White water boiled around their bases and all sorts of sea birds wheeled and called in a late afternoon frenzy about their craggy faces. And all this in the middle of this vast ocean, she thought, hundreds of miles from anywhere-I feel like Captain Cook! That's the only thing lacking: a tall ship threading its way through the reef…

And so absorbed was she, as she set up her tripod and started photographing, that it wasn't until with a sigh she took her last shot that she realised S. Warwick was standing a few paces away watching her thoughtfully.

'Oh. Thank you-the light's fading now so I won't take any more. I do appreciate your driving me here; you probably think I'm quite mad!' She telescoped her tripod and started to pack her camera away. 'Uh…' She looked around a bit blankly.

'You were going to say-what now?' he suggested with a trace of irony.

'Well.' She grimaced. 'Yes…'

'How about a drink?'

'Oh, I-'

'Don't argue, Mrs Hastings,' he returned. 'Just do as you're told. We still have a discussion to conclude-I think it's the least you owe me.'

Davina hesitated, but there was little she could do; there was no one about, no buildings that she could see, nothing but wild and wonderful Lord Howe and the South Pacific. So she climbed back into S. Warwick's unusually well-sprung Land Rover.