Chapter 1

The lamp

The light should not have been on. Ada Pennock knew the rota by heart because she had written it, in 1994, on the back of a tide table that was still pinned inside the lamp room door. Marrow Point had been automated the year after her brother went missing, and the automation had failed, politely and permanently, the year after that. Nobody had climbed those stairs in a decade.

And yet, from the ferry rail, with the wind pulling her scarf toward the sea, she watched the beam swing once across the fog and come back round.

The Lighthouse at Marrow Point

He shrugged, which was the island's answer to most things. The beam came round again. Ada counted, out of a habit older than her marriage, older than her teaching career, older than anything except the headland itself. Four seconds dark, one second light. The pattern was hers. Not the council's. Not the trust's. Hers and Tom's, set the summer they were twelve and allowed, for the first time, to wind the clockwork alone.

The ferry nudged the jetty. Ada picked up her bag and did not let herself run.