For Death Comes Softly

Two

The shout came just when I had totally accepted that it was all over. A faint call above the roar of the sea.

I peered into the darkness. I could just make out a gleam which could surely only be the lights of a boat. Yet for a moment or two I still wasn’t quite sure if I was indulging in wishful thinking, if my imagination was playing tricks on me. Then I heard an engine. I remembered the torch dangling loosely from its strap around my wrist, which I had switched off in order to conserve its batteries for as long as possible. Somehow I found the strength to grasp it, switch it on, and wave it frantically. I tried to shout but my voice came only in gasps, and in any case, whoever was aboard that noisy sounding boat would never be able to hear.

They spotted me. At the time it seemed like a miracle, but later I realised that they were half expecting me to be on the Pencil. They had come looking for me.

The beam of my torch, still quite powerful thanks to my energy-conservation efforts, picked up the approaching bow of an inflatable — quite possibly the one which had dumped me there in the first place — nosing its way through the hazardous array of rocks. The boat came alongside the Pencil, unable to tie up anywhere now even temporarily as the ledge was four or five feet under water, and seconds later strong arms reached up for me and pulled me downwards.

I collapsed into a kind of human cradle, a tangle of limbs. The faces were just a hazy shadow. I had no idea even how many people were aboard the small boat, let alone who they were, and neither did I care. I had, however, a vague impression that young Jason did not seem to be among them, although, in reality, I was only half-conscious.

‘It’s all right, you are safe now,’ said a soothing male voice.

They knew about survival, it seemed. They wrapped me in tin foil and then blankets and something hot, sweet and liquid was pressed to my lips. I remember gulping it gratefully, feeling warming reviving fluid cursing through my system. Yet I was only barely aware of what was going on. I did know that I was safe. I knew that the ordeal was over. And that was enough. The next few hours were indistinct. At some stage I realised vaguely that I was back on dry land, the motion of the sea no longer rocking me, and that there were other new voices speaking and a certain bustle going on around me.

Strong arms carried me again. There was the sound of another engine, the island Land Rover perhaps. I was almost oblivious. I had no recollection of where I was taken or of being stripped of my sodden clothes and put to bed, although later it became apparent that is what had happened. Ultimately I became aware only of deep warmth and comfort and of the overpowering need for sleep.

Eventually I woke. I was lying on the softest mattress I had ever experienced, wrapped in white sheets so crisp they crackled when I moved, upon a bed which seemed to be about the same size as most people’s houses. Gradually I took in a room of extremely grand proportions with huge towering windows. My first impression was of a glorious abundance of light again. And my second of a handsome Charles Dance lookalike sitting by my bedside peering at me anxiously.

The sunshine streaming through the windows was blinding. I blinked furiously. When I had more or less accustomed my eyes to the glare, Charles Dance was still there, leaning forward now and looking relieved.

‘Thank God,’ he said. ‘We choppered the doctor over in the night and he reckoned all you needed was warmth and rest. But none of us were entirely sure...’

‘I don’t remember a doctor...’ I mumbled blearily. My head felt as if it belonged to somebody else.

‘You wouldn’t,’ replied the vision. ‘You were suffering from shock and exposure. You were pretty much out for the count.’

He smiled. It is pretty damn stupid to be bowled over by a smile when you’ve just come back from the dead. But then, I’ve never been very bright when it comes to matters of the heart — let alone the more basic urges.

‘I’m Robin Davey, by the way,’ he said.

Even in my state of weakness I recognised the name. The Davey family had owned Abri for generations and Robin Davey was about the nearest thing to a feudal lord this side of the remains of Hadrian’s Wall. I judged him to be somewhere in his mid-forties, and his face was of the sort that is inclined to improve with age. He had wispy reddish blond hair, thinning a bit, which in no way lessened his attractiveness, and the brightest of blue eyes. They held an obvious warmth and humour in the way they crinkled at the edges and he positively oozed charm.

‘I’m so sorry, Miss Piper, that I was not here to welcome you to my island and I am even sorrier I was not here to stop what happened yesterday afternoon.’

I struggled to remember exactly what had happened.

‘Was it you who rescued me from that rock?’ I asked hesitantly.

He nodded imperceptibly.

I could remember being taken out there by the boy, Jason. But what had happened then? Why had he left me there? I began to ask more questions.

Robin Davey shook his head. ‘Later,’ he said. ‘For now you must rest. I just hope you feel able to accept my apologies and my hospitality.’

He stood up then. He was a big man, definitely well over six feet tall, and I could not help noticing the breadth of his shoulders and the slenderness of his hips as he left the room.

It was just as I was beginning to realise that the one question I might have insisted upon asking was exactly where I was, that the door opened again and in bustled a thin rather severe-looking woman, balancing a tray on which sat a bowl of something steaming.

‘I’m Mrs Cotley, Mr Robin’s housekeeper,’ she said in a soft voice which completely belied her somewhat forbidding appearance. ‘Mr Robin says that his home is your home, and that I’m to look after you,’ she went on, at least half-answering my as yet unspoken question.

She brought the tray to the bedside, with one hand flicked something underneath it so that it grew neat little legs, then manoeuvred it across my lap. I looked down at myself with interest as I lay caged within the tray’s wooden frame. I appeared to be clad in a man’s nightshirt. It was striped in blue and made of the kind of cosy flannelette I vaguely remembered from my childhood.

‘Mr Robin’s,’ said Mrs Cotley, who obviously didn’t miss much. ‘Hope you don’t mind, most comfortable nightwear you can get, they be.’

I shook my head, and barely even had the strength to wonder if Mr Robin had helped me into the nightshirt. Not likely with Mrs Cotley around. Meanwhile my nostrils were being invaded by the smell of something wonderfully good.

‘This is my special home-made chicken broth, my dear,’ said Mrs Cotley soothingly. ‘And I want you to eat it all up. ‘Twill bring your strength back in no time.’

Obediently I picked up my spoon and overcame — just — a slightly hysterical desire to giggle. The whole thing was like living out a cliché. I had been rescued by a quite gorgeous man and now I was sitting up in bed in his house eating chicken broth and being mothered by his housekeeper.

Mrs Cotley’s chicken broth turned out to be nothing to giggle about, and tasted every bit as good as it smelt. Even that, however, could not quite bring about a miracle. My ordeal had taken its toll. It was, I learned, mid-afternoon. I had been more or less asleep since being put to bed shortly before midnight, and I still felt exhausted.

Mrs Cotley insisted that I stay in bed, but in fact I wasn’t arguing. It was late the following morning before I woke properly and reckoned I was at least halfway back to normal.

I climbed a little uncertainly out of bed and as soon as I started to move around the room Mrs C, looking grim and sounding kind, arrived clutching a cup of tea. She fussed around me in the already familiar motherly fashion.

‘Come down to the kitchen when you’m ready and I’ll have a nice breakfast waiting for you, dear,’ she said.

I saw that the clothes which I had been wearing on my ill-fated trip to the Pencil had been washed, dried and ironed, and were neatly folded on a chair by the bed. After a much needed bath and hair-wash, I put them on, wandered downstairs, and was guided to the kitchen by the sweetly wafting aroma of fresh coffee and frying bacon.

Mrs Cotley greeted me with a tight smile. I had already realised that her nature matched the warmth of her voice. If it contained any of the paradoxical severity of her appearance then this was probably reserved to add weight to the uncompromising efficiency with which she patently ran this house and all who resided in it.

I was swiftly provided with a huge fried breakfast followed, in the West Country fashion, by slices of rich fruit cake.

‘Mr Robin’s off at the farm,’ she informed me. ‘He’ll be back just after one for ‘is dinner and ’e’s going to be that pleased you’re up and about.’

I glanced at my watch, which thankfully appeared to have survived its thorough drenching on the Pencil. It was already nearly noon. The breakfast had been delicious, an orgy of cholesterol, and my appetite — nearly always healthy, I was a great believer in comfort food — seemed even more vociferous than usual. Nonetheless, if I was also expected to have dinner just after one I might be struggling.

Mrs Cotley, clutching a big mug of tea, came and sat at the kitchen table to watch me finish off the fruit cake.

‘He’s been worried sick about ’ee I don’t mind telling ’ee,’ she confided in an almost conspiratorial fashion, as if informing me of something very important and confidential. ‘You know that’s ’is bedroom you’re in, don’t ’ee? Mr Robin said you must ’ave the best room in house, and he moved isself into one of the guest rooms.’

I raised an eyebrow and just stopped myself remarking that Mr Robin was quite welcome to share the best bedroom with me, but I suspected that Mrs C would not approve of such flippant remarks about the man she clearly hero-worshipped.

I spent a fascinating hour or so checking out the Davey home, which I knew to be called Highpoint House, having admired the splendid Georgian building from the outside frequently during my first few days on the island. It’s name had been appropriately bestowed. The house dominated the island from a fine vantage point at the edge of the village, but it nestled into the top of a gully, and, unlike my lighthouse, was considerably sheltered from the high winds Abri was famous for. The grand old stairway and the hall boasted a selection of Davey ancestral portraits. There were more in the drawing room where Mrs Cotley bade me sit by a blazing fire.

She fussed over me nonstop — as she had probably been told to do, I thought — not surprising when I finally began to learn the truth about the incident that had nearly killed me.

It was Robin Davey who did his best to explain. Upon returning to the house he came straight into the drawing room and sat down opposite me.

‘I’m just so glad you’re up and about,’ he said, and smiled that smile again.

‘Thank you,’ I responded. And waited. He knew exactly what I was waiting for.

‘I expect you want to know what happened?’

I merely nodded.

‘Yes, well, I won’t beat around the bush,’ he said. ‘Jason Tucker suffers from epilepsy. Acutely so, and a very extreme form. He appears to be perfectly normal ninety-nine per cent of the time, but when he does have an attack he is capable of completely losing his short-term memory.

‘He had a grand mal while you were on the Pencil and he was hovering around in the inflatable. He passed out and then went into a kind of trance. By the time he had fully recovered consciousness the boat had drifted almost back to the shore — the tide was coming in if you recall. Jason had absolutely no memory of dropping a visitor off at the rock and had completely forgotten why he was out at sea at all.

‘We are all terribly, terribly sorry, and both Jason and his father will be up here this afternoon to apologise to you personally.’

I stared at him in amazement. ‘As simple as that?’ I said. ‘Look, I’m sure Jason is a very nice young chap and everything, but nobody with that affliction should be in charge of a boat at all, let alone carrying unsuspecting passengers around the place.’

‘I know.’ Robin Davey sighed resignedly. ‘He wasn’t supposed to do what he did, of course he wasn’t. I employ him as a porter and an odd job man, but his family have fished off Abri for almost as long as mine have been here. We let him use the boat and do a bit of fishing because he loves it, but he’s not supposed to carry passengers, he knows that.’

‘Mr Davey, I could have died,’ I said.

‘Call me Robin, please,’ he responded. ‘But no, you had to be missed, we were always going to miss you. You must realise that. We only take a maximum of about twenty staying guests on the island, and there are just a dozen of you here at the moment. As soon as you didn’t turn up for supper at The Tavern, we reckoned something was amiss. One of the waitresses remembered seeing Jason bring the inflatable into the landing beach quite late in the day and that when she spoke to him he had seemed confused and unwell. We put two and two together...’

I wasn’t entirely convinced. I reckoned I’d had a very lucky escape indeed. All Abri’s accommodation had at least elementary cooking facilities and some guests did their own catering. It was fortunate that I had trotted along to The Tavern at about six every evening for my first drink of the day followed by an early supper. Had I not been both bone idle when it came to any kind of domesticity, and also such a creature of habit, I might not have been so fortunate. I might not have been missed until the next morning, and I was quite sure that I would have been unable to survive an entire night clinging to the Pencil. The very thought of my fate had my ordeal lasted much longer brought me out in a cold sweat.

No wonder Robin Davey was showing so much concern. Idly I wondered how much I could sue the bugger for, and I did obtain a certain rum satisfaction from watching him turn a dull shade of green when I casually told him my job.

I don’t look like a Detective Chief Inspector. In fact I don’t look like a copper at all, although I’ve never been quite sure whether that has by and large been an advantage or a disadvantage to me. I have quite a lot of very curly fair hair, and as I had allowed it to dry naturally that morning, it had formed itself into a fuzzy blonde halo around my head. I had once overheard a couple of particularly chauvinistic Avon and Somerset wooden-tops describe me as ‘a Barbie-doll with a brain’. However, being all too aware of the average copper’s opinion of women in The Job, certainly in senior positions, I had merely counted myself fortunate that they’d allowed that I had a brain. On this occasion it was pleasantly entertaining to watch Robin Davey’s reaction to my profession and my rank. He was a quick recoverer though.

‘I see,’ he remarked, trying, somewhat desperately I thought, to sound light-hearted. ‘I’d better watch my step then, hadn’t I.’

Even the twinkle which seemed to be permanently in his eye momentarily disappeared. I decided to rub things in a bit — he owed me that luxury, at least.

‘I think it’s a little late for that,’ I said. ‘You’re already involved in very nearly causing the death of a police officer.’

‘I wouldn’t have put it quite like that,’ he ventured.

‘No, I’m sure you wouldn’t,’ I said.

‘I’m not sure whether you’re making veiled threats or teasing me,’ he said, his voice gentle now. ‘I don’t blame you in either case. I am so sorry for what you have been through, and I just want you to know that you are welcome to stay in my home for as long as you like. Take all the time you can to get over this.’

I didn’t respond for a moment. When he spoke again his manner was ever so slightly hesitant, his voice sounded just a little doubtful.

‘Assuming you want to stay on Abri, of course...’

I did want to stay — although only a couple of days of my planned holiday there remained, I had a further week’s leave before I was due back at the nick and no special plans. I wanted to stay with Robin Davey. That was my trouble. I hadn’t learned about men at all as I had grown older, just got stupider as every day passed, in fact.

At least I managed not to sound too childishly eager when I eventually responded.

‘A few days would be good,’ I said lightly. ‘I still feel a bit shaken up, to tell the truth. Some time to recover quietly would go down well...’

He was immediately all concern again. He leaned close to me, reaching out with one hand to touch my shoulder.

‘Of course, you’re shaken up,’ he said. ‘You’ve had a very frightening experience. I’ll get the rest of your things brought over from the Old Light, then you must try to relax. And just remember, if there’s anything else I can do to help I will, anything at all...’

I swear my heart fluttered. The expression there’s no fool like an old fool could have been invented for me. At thirty-five I could still be bowled over like a teenager. Loneliness was small excuse.

I watched Robin Davey eat his dinner and fortunately was not actually force-fed by Mrs Cotley, who was probably so thin because she was so busy feeding up everybody who came into her clutches that she never had time to eat anything herself, although she did express some concern about my not having eaten for at least an hour.

Soon after Robin returned to whatever it was he was doing at the farm, Jason Tucker and his father Frank arrived as promised.

Mrs Cotley led them into the drawing room to me as if I were some ancient dowager aunt granting an audience, which at once made me feel at a disadvantage even though the company was hardly overbearing. Frank Tucker was a small scraggy man. His sinewy arms protruded from rolled-up woollen shirt sleeves and his trousers flapped around exceptionally skinny legs. Strange that he had fathered so strapping a son. Both men looked red-faced and uneasy, although they couldn’t have been more uneasy than me.

‘Miss, ’e’s a good boy, my Jason, but ’e should have knowed better than to do what ’e did,’ said Frank, in an accent much broader than his son’s, but a voice just as soft and gentle. His blue eyes, bright as Robin Davey’s, shone earnestly out of a sharp-featured brown leather face. ‘’E knows he mustn’t take no one out in thigee boat. Don’t ee boy?’

Jason nodded shamefacedly. ‘I thought I was better, miss, honest I did,’ he said. ‘I hadn’t had a turn, oh, not for two years nor more, ’ad I, father?’

His father eagerly nodded his agreement.

‘It’s all right,’ I heard myself say. ‘Just one of those things.’

Abri was a holiday island. As a guest there I had been put in extreme danger. The island came under the same rules and regulations as any mainland hotel, and I knew perfectly well that the responsible thing to do was to report the incident to the Health and Safety Executive in Exeter, and leave it to them to ensure that nobody else was ever put in similar danger.

I suppose I also already knew that I was not going to cause trouble for Robin Davey or his people, and by the time Frank and Jason Tucker left Highpoint they must have been pretty sure of that too.

I was fascinated by Robin Davey and wanted to know more about him, which fortunately wasn’t a difficult thing to do. The entire existence of Abri quite obviously revolved around him and he was the number one topic of conversation. Mrs Cotley, predictably enough, was a particularly rich source of information. Cooking and cleaning for Robin Davey was apparently what gave her life its meaning.

‘Mr Davey has been very kind,’ I remarked casually to her as later that afternoon I sat in the kitchen watching her prepare yet more food. The evening meal. Two full-scale dinners were served at Highpoint House it appeared, the one served at lunchtime was called dinner and the one served around 8 p.m. was simply the evening meal.

My remark was quite enough to set Mrs Cotley off on autopilot.

‘Oh, he always is kind, a fine, fine man,’ she told me. ‘The way he’s coped with tragedy has been a lesson to us all. Then all these years without a wife. Not right for a man like ’e, not right at all.’

So he was unmarried was he. I gave up trying to pretend to myself that Robin Davey’s marital status held no interest for me. And Mrs Cotley’s reference to tragedy finally jogged my memory into some kind of sluggish activity. I began to dimly recall certain details of Davey’s early life that had attracted a great deal of public attention. With little or no prompting Mrs Cotley eagerly filled in the gaps.

There had been a time when Robin Davey, the uncrowned King of Abri as he was still sometimes called, had appeared to have everything, including a wife and a little son — the heir that even in the present day and age remains obligatory for the likes of him. But the baby boy had been just a toddler when he had been taken ill with a mystery virus which also claimed his mother, and each of them had died after a devastating illness lasting several months.

“Twas a terrible time, yer on Abri,’ Mrs Cotley volunteered. ‘Us ’ad to watch this lovely young man see his family being taken away from him. And then, when us found out what ‘twas that killed ’em, well, that was a fright too, I can tell ’ee.’

I remembered more clearly then. The death of Robin Davey’s wife and child had become big news because they had both been early victims of AIDS, contracted from an infected supply of blood administered to Mrs Davey during childbirth. That had been over sixteen years previously. It seems incredible now, but most people hadn’t even known about the existence of AIDS then, and it had only been towards the end of mother and child’s lives that the truth had been learned. I had no idea how Robin Davey had dealt with such tragedy nor how he had lived his life since then, although Mrs Cotley would surely do her best to tell me with very little encouragement.

With a history like that there was little reason to assume that he would take any real interest in me. Yet I still managed to convince myself that there could be a lot more in his generosity and attentiveness than concern for my health and anxiety about what action I might take. I suppose I could be forgiven for misunderstanding, if indeed I did misunderstand. Over the next few days Robin was wonderfully kind and considerate, and quite charming company.

He managed Abri himself, the farm of almost 2000 sheep, the tourist business, the fishing activities, and the husbandry of the island’s wildlife and vegetation. I quickly realised that all of this was more than a full-time occupation. Yet three afternoons in a row Robin managed to free himself for a couple of hours in order to take me to see some new point of interest on the island and to explain the history which patently so fascinated him.

I was never a keen student of history, usually finding the present to be of considerably more interest, but I had to admit that the story of Abri, certainly as related by Robin Davey, was an extraordinary one. There were signs of settlements on the island dating back to the Bronze Age, he told me. After the Battle of Hastings in 1066, Abri fell into the hands of various Norman nobles, one of whom gave the island the name it still bore.

‘It’s French for “Place of Refuge”, of course,’ said Robin.

There was no ‘of course’ about it for me as I had always been hopeless with languages, but I tried not to let my ignorance show. Not that Robin would have noticed any reaction of mine at that moment. He was in full flight.

‘The pronunciation has become well and truly anglicised, nobody much rolls their “R”s around here, but there’s no name could suit this island better,’ he continued.

He grinned at me, delighting in the story he was telling, and went on to explain how, in the latter half of the thirteenth century, almost at the end of his reign, King Henry III had gained possession. It was Henry who built the now ruined castle, high above the landing beach, which had become one of Abri’s most famous landmarks.

‘Can you imagine what it must have been like to live here then,’ Robin enthused, his blue eyes shining, as we stood on the remaining battlements one blustery afternoon looking out to sea. He turned back to the castle, or rather the remains of it, which somehow managed to remain formidable and forbidding. ‘I’d love to restore it,’ he said wistfully. ‘But I just don’t have the money.’

‘I thought you Daveys were supposed to be mega rich,’ I teased.

He gave a wry chuckle. ‘This island has a way of draining cash,’ he said. ‘The only people who have ever flourished here have been villains. The Vikings did well enough out of Abri, they used it as a base for plundering raids to the mainland. It’s been a smuggler’s den in its time and a haven for pirates. But my great-great-great-great-grandfather, Ernest John Davey, was one of the richest men in England when he bought Abri in 1810. Now all we Daveys have is an overdraft and this lump of old rock.’

He stamped his foot on a granite outcrop. His words were dismissive but I was already becoming aware of the strength of his feeling for Abri.

‘You really love this place, Robin, don’t you?’ I said quietly.

‘I love it more than life itself,’ he replied, and there was the hint of a quaver in his voice. I looked at him in mild surprise. He had a quaint turn of phrase sometimes, out of another age. I had never heard anyone talk like that before. Aware probably of my curious glance, he suddenly grinned and took me by the arm.

‘C’mon, there’s loads more to see,’ he said lightly, and led me off along the west coast path heading north.

He took me to the Battery, built in the mid-nineteenth century to supplement the suspect Old Lighthouse during fog by firing a round of blank shot from two eighteen-pound guns every ten minutes.

The wind was blowing the right way and we were able to sit down with our backs to the cliffside and enjoy the sun. Robin pointed out a lone seal powering through the swell below.

‘I think I’ve had enough of seal-spotting,’ I remarked.

He laughed easily. There was no tension between us any more, and I realised that I was probably enjoying his company more than was good for me.

Further along the west side he showed me a succession of huge chasms which dramatically crisscrossed the landscape.

‘One of the island’s mysteries,’ he said. ‘Most of the locals believe they were caused by an earthquake three or four centuries ago, but there’s no proof.’

I stepped forward as close as I dared to the edge of one and looked down the steep sides of a gaping crack which must have been over one hundred feet deep. With the toe of a walking boot I caught a couple of loose stones and they bounced and clattered their way down the rift into the very bedrock of Abri.

‘Your island is full of hidden dangers, it seems to me, Robin,’ I said.

For a moment he looked startled and I laughed. One thing was certain about Robin Davey — his sense of humour had not been honed in a Bristol police station.

‘I’m joking,’ I said.

His eyes crinkled. That crinkly look was beginning to become familiar to me already, and I was growing to like it more and more.

On the way back to Highpoint we passed an old tumbled-down granite building surrounded by a tangle of rusting iron debris and what appeared to be a broken stretch of railway line. I glanced at Robin enquiringly.

‘All that remains of Abri’s celebrated gold-mining operation,’ he told me.

‘Good God,’ I responded. ‘I didn’t know we were in the Klondike.’

Robin smiled. ‘There’s always been gold in the west of England,’ he said. ‘People often don’t realise just how much. Within the last four or five years pirate diggers have illegally hacked six tons of rock off Hopes Nose in Torbay because there are veins of gold running right through the cliff. And did you know there’s prospecting going on right now around Crediton?’

I couldn’t help giggling at the picture that conjured up. ‘What, grizzled old timers in cowboy hats sifting for gold in the trout streams of Devon?’

Robin shook his head, ignoring my sarcastic approach.

‘Not exactly,’ he said. ‘Three years ago now a company called Minmet sunk bore holes in the Crediton Trough, which is a thirty-mile rift valley, and discovered bedrock gold. There’s still exploratory work going on to discover whether or not there is actually enough gold to warrant a full-scale commercial mining operation, but so far there has been every indication that there is.’

I studied the ruined old building more carefully. It looked as if there had been a big chimney at one end. Robin followed my gaze.

‘They used to smelt the gold on the spot, over charcoal raised to a tremendous heat in brick ovens, just like the Romans did, and they were great gold miners. That produced a kind of gold concentrate, very impure. The railway was used to transport the impure gold out and on to the mainland to be refined and all the necessary goods and equipment in — including the charcoal because there’s never been more than scrubby woodland on Abri. Everything was winched up and down the cliffs. The easiest ways in those days.’

‘But surely there could never have been a really substantial gold-mining operation on Abri?’ I asked. ‘Not an island this size in the middle of the Bristol Channel?’

‘No, although people will conquer anything to get at gold. And a substantial vein was discovered on Abri. We all know the expression, but great-great-great-great-grandfather Ernest John really did strike gold.’

‘So surely that should have made your family even richer?’ I queried.

Robin shook his head. ‘Only temporarily,’ he replied. ‘The vein ran out quite quickly, but Ernest John never believed it. And by the time he died in 1860 at the age of ninety, he had not only lost all that the gold mining had earned him, but also much of his original fortune as well.’

We were standing by the broken railway line now. Robin kicked at a piece of twisted iron.

‘The gold turned out to be more of a curse than a blessing in the end,’ he said. ‘And that’s quite a familiar story, isn’t it?’

‘I think I’ve seen the film,’ I told him.

Robin laughed. ‘More than likely,’ he replied. ‘It must have been an amazing period in the island’s history though. Strange to think that when it was all over the islanders just blocked up the shafts, let the grass grow over them, and went back to sheep farming. Now there’s something that hasn’t changed.’

We continued to walk back towards Highpoint. Then Robin told me he needed to call in at the farm to check on a sick ewe. I went along, happy just to be with him. I had no idea that this would turn out to be the last of these carefree afternoons we were to spend together. His tragic past somehow seemed to turn Robin Davey into an even more romantic figure than he may otherwise have been. My fantasy software was fully operational — marginally better than lusting after an eighteen-year-old boy who then nearly kills you, I suppose, but not a lot.

The bombshell came the next day.

‘Rose, I’d like you to meet Natasha Felks,’ said Robin, cool as you like. ‘She’s over for the weekend.’

I had just noticed the Puffin moored in Home Bay, but, having been for a walk on my own that morning, all the way to the new north lighthouse, I had not even seen the ship come in let alone watched the passengers disembark. When I returned Robin was sitting in the drawing room quaffing his favourite dry sherry with this tall slender elegant thing straight off the cover of Tatler, who stood up, strode over to me, as I hovered uncertainly in the doorway, and held out a limp hand.

‘Call me Tash,’ she said in an accent that was pure Roedean. ‘Everybody else does.’

‘Delighted,’ I replied. But I wasn’t, of course. I’m prejudiced against tall slender elegant things.

I suppose my face bore an enquiring look.

‘Oh sorry,’ said Robin. ‘I should have said, Tash is my fiancée.’

He was as casual as if remarking that he’d forgotten to put the milk bottles out. Except they don’t have milkmen too often on Abri island.

I knew I had no right to feel the way I did, but I could have slapped his face, I really could.

‘Delighted,’ I said again, like some broken down old robot, and made myself stretch my face into some sort of smile.

The Puffin was to stay moored in Home Bay overnight and return to the mainland in the morning. I left with her.

Nothing of a remotely intimate nature had ever passed between the owner of Abri Island and me. There had been no words of endearment, no kiss, no touch, barely even the meeting of fingertips. But does your imagination ever run completely away with you when you meet someone you fancy rotten?

Ever since my husband, Simon, and I split I had been rather more out of control than usual in that direction. OK, so it’s reasonable enough that the shock of nearly dying might make you extra vulnerable. Typically, though, I had gone right over the top.

In the five days since I had been pulled to safety by Robin Davey off the side of the Pencil I had, in the dark recesses of my poor pathetic mind, already shagged him senseless, married him, and born him at least four children.

Reality had struck hard in the form of Natasha Felks. The bloody girl was a charmer as well, a real softy, an absolute sweetheart. Damn her eyes. And a looker. And she oozed sex appeal. It really was all too much. I certainly had no desire to stay any longer on Abri and watch the two of them together, although I endeavoured mightily not to give the slightest hint that the arrival of Ms Felks had in any way precipitated my departure.

Robin insisted on walking with me down to Home Bay, although in many ways I would have preferred him not to. I tried not to think about what a fool I had nearly made of myself.

As we stood on the beach watching Jason hoist my bag into the landing craft, Robin leaned close and kissed me on both cheeks, grasping me lightly by the shoulders. Our first kiss, but not of the kind I had had in mind. I deliberately did not respond in any way, but if he had noticed any change in my reactions to him since the introduction of Natasha Felks onto the scene he gave no sign.

‘Rose, it has been such a great pleasure to get to know you, and I do so hope we will meet again in more pleasant circumstances.’

To the last he was as attentive as he had been from the beginning. There was no doubt that I remained disturbed by him, even though I had made myself start to question his motives, and, understandably perhaps under the circumstance, his almost exaggerated Jane Austen-style courtesy was beginning to irritate me. But I did my best to behave normally, or what I hoped he would accept to be that.

‘Thank you for looking after me,’ I said, every bit as formal as he was being. Then I added sternly: ‘Just make sure Jason Tucker never gets to take anyone out in that boat alone ever again. That’s all.’

He nodded gravely. ‘No chance of that.’

I decided to play policeman, more of a defence mechanism than anything else.

‘Robin, if I ever heard that that boy had been allowed to put any other visitor to this island in even the slightest risk I would report it at once, you do understand that, don’t you?’

‘I would expect no less,’ he said, as he helped me into the landing craft where Frank Tucker sat waiting at the tiller trying to look as if he had not been listening to every word we had said.

Clumsy as ever I stumbled on the wheeled jetty and to my annoyance fell back quite heavily into Robin’s arms. He steadied me at once, and I found myself just briefly cradled against his chest looking up into those deep blue eyes.

‘I’m just sorry we met like this, I’m going to miss you,’ he murmured.

Surely he could not possibly be quite so warm and affectionate if he had not felt something of what I had felt. The man was so confusing. One half of me was angry with him, while at the same time I had to fight to stop the other half of me melting all over again. Apart from anything else there was the small matter of a fiancée to consider. Was it, I wondered, really possible that his attentions to me had been a quite cynical act merely in order to ensure that I took no action for negligence against him and Abri? Or had he merely shown the kind of courteous concern he would for anyone who had found themselves in my situation, and had it been just my imagination that had begun to make more of it?

All I knew at that moment was — in spite of my assurances to young Jason and his father — that if I thought I would ever have the time or the energy, I rather liked the idea of taking bloody Robin Davey to court and suing the pants off him over the danger I had been put in on his blessed island.

However I didn’t, of course. I just went back to work, like you do.