The Woman of Blackwater Island

I could smell the salt before I saw the water through the fog. The launch's engine coughed and spluttered as Malcolm Reid guided us towards what I hoped was Blackwater Island Retreat. My canvas holdall sat between my boots, everything I would need for the next four months packed into one worn bag.

"First time out here?" Malcolm asked, without taking his eyes off the grey water ahead.

"Yeah. I'm looking forward to it."

Malcolm made a sound that might have been a laugh. "An island's different from the mainland. No quick trips into town when you get restless. Hardly any mobile signal once you're past the jetty."

"How often does the launch run?"

"Every Thursday, if the weather cooperates."

The fog began to thin, revealing dark shapes that resolved into Scots pine, birch and wind-bent spruce rising above the rocky shore. A wooden jetty stretched into the water, and beyond it I could make out a cluster of buildings tucked between the plantation and a small beach.

"That's it," Malcolm said, easing back the throttle. "Blackwater Island Retreat. I've been bringing seasonal staff out here for fifteen years. Some love it. Some last two weeks before they're begging for a lift home."

"Which do you think I'll be?"

Malcolm glanced at me for the first time since we had left the small harbour near Largs. His weathered face showed no expression.

"Hard to say. You seem steady enough, but the island gets to people in different ways. Some start hearing things in the trees at night. Others just get cabin fever from being stuck with the same five people day after day."

The launch bumped against the jetty with a hollow thud. Malcolm looped a mooring line around a wooden post and gestured towards the shore.

"Fiona's probably waiting for you at the main lodge. She runs the place."

I shouldered my holdall and stepped onto the jetty. The boards felt solid beneath my boots, though I could hear water lapping against the supports below. Malcolm was already casting off again.

"Next launch is Thursday," he said. "Weather permitting."

"Thanks for the lift."

Malcolm nodded and pushed away. I watched the launch disappear into the fog before turning towards the buildings.

A gravel path led from the jetty through the trees to a large timber lodge with green shutters. Six smaller guest lodges stood around it, linked by paths that vanished into the plantation. The main lodge's front door opened before I reached it. A woman in her forties stepped outside, her blonde hair pulled into a neat ponytail. She wore a blue blouse and stone-coloured chinos that looked freshly pressed.

"You must be Jamie," she said, extending a hand. "Fiona Kershaw. Welcome to Blackwater Island Retreat."

Her grip was firm and professional.

"Thanks. It's good to be here."

"How was the crossing? Malcolm didn't frighten you off with his doom-and-gloom routine, did he?"

"He mentioned the island could be isolating."

Fiona laughed. "Malcolm's been saying that for years. He thinks anyone under fifty will have a nervous breakdown the moment they lose the Wi-Fi signal. Come on. I'll show you round and get you settled."

She led me up the wooden steps to the lodge's wraparound veranda. Through the windows I could see a dining room with round tables covered in white cloths, and beyond it a sitting area where leather chairs surrounded a stone fireplace.

"We're running at about sixty per cent capacity this season," Fiona said as she opened the door. "Mostly weekend guests from Glasgow and Edinburgh. Couples wanting a quiet break, families wanting to switch off for a few days. Nothing too demanding."

The interior smelt of pine disinfectant and coffee. A young woman with dark hair tied in a ponytail was wiping the dining tables. She looked up and waved when she saw us.

"That's Megan Price," Fiona said. "She handles kitchen preparation and dining-room service. You'll meet the others in a moment."

We crossed the dining room and entered a corridor lined with framed photographs of the island. Most showed the same scenery I had seen from the launch: the mixed plantation, rocky beaches and the jetty reaching into grey water.

"The island is roughly three kilometres long and under a kilometre wide," Fiona said. "The retreat occupies the southern third. The rest is mainly woodland, with a few old huts that haven't been used in years. Guests sometimes walk the trails, but most stay close to the lodge."

A door at the end of the corridor opened and two men came in, dressed in work clothes and carrying mugs of coffee. The taller man had dark hair and moved with the easy confidence of someone accustomed to physical work. The shorter one had black hair and a friendly face that brightened when he saw us.

"Perfect timing," Fiona said. "Jamie, meet Callum Fraser and Rory Bennett. Callum will be sharing your room, and Rory handles housekeeping."

Callum put down his mug and stepped forwards to shake my hand.

"Good to meet you. Ready to get your hands dirty?"

"That's why I'm here."

Rory grinned and shook my hand next. His palm was warm and calloused.

"Welcome to paradise. Hope you like the smell of pine, because you'll get plenty of it over the next four months."

"Better than exhaust fumes."

"That's the spirit," Fiona said. "Let me show you to the staff cabin, then we'll go over your duties."

We left through a side door and followed another gravel path into the trees. The lifting fog revealed more of the retreat's layout. I counted six guest lodges scattered through the plantation, each with a small veranda and windows facing in different directions. Beyond them stood two larger staff cabins.

"Staff quarters," Fiona said, taking a key from her pocket. "You and Callum have this one. Rory and Megan are next door."

Our cabin was basic but comfortable: one shared room containing two single beds with a bedside table between them, a chest of drawers, a small dining table and two chairs. A kitchenette occupied one wall, with a hob, fridge and short stretch of worktop. A narrow door led to a bathroom barely large enough to turn round in. Two windows faced the trees behind the building.

Callum indicated the bed on the left. "I took this one when I arrived last month, but we can swap if you like."

"This is fine," I said, setting my holdall on the other bed.

It was everything I needed.

Outside, Fiona checked something on her phone.

"Your main responsibilities will be grounds maintenance and repairs to the jetty," she said. "Callum will show you where we keep the tools and equipment. Breakfast is at 07:00, lunch at noon and dinner at 18:00. Guests usually eat at the same times, so schedule noisy work for mid-morning or mid-afternoon."

"Sounds straightforward."

"It is. This isn't a high-pressure post, Jamie. Keep the grass cut, fix anything that breaks and help guests with their luggage when the Thursday launch comes in. Most of the time, you'll be left to get on with it."

Callum nodded towards a low building behind the staff cabins. "The tool store's over there. We've got mowers, strimmers, hedge cutters and all the ordinary maintenance gear. The far side of the jetty took a battering in the winter storms. I'll show you tomorrow."

"For now, get settled and meet everyone properly," Fiona said. "Dinner's in an hour."

She headed back towards the main lodge, leaving me with Callum. He seemed easy enough to work with, not the sort to make an issue of sharing a room or dividing up the duties.

"So, what brought you out here?" he asked as we returned to the cabin.

"I needed a change of scenery. Four months on an island sounded better than another summer in the city."

"I understand that. I was working on a building site in Glasgow before this. Same thing every day. Traffic, noise, people everywhere. This is better."

"How long have you been here?"

"About a month. Started in May, when they opened for the season. It's good work if you don't mind being cut off from everything."

We spent the next hour unpacking my things and talking about the job. Callum had a relaxed manner that made conversation easy. In the few weeks he had been there, he had already learnt the rhythms of the place: when guests were most likely to need help, which areas required the most maintenance and how to stay out of Fiona's way when she was handling a problem.

Dinner was served in the lodge dining room with all the staff present. Megan had prepared baked sea trout with potatoes and vegetables from the kitchen garden. Rory kept everyone laughing with stories about guests who had arrived expecting luxury and found themselves sharing their bathrooms with spiders.

"Last weekend, we had a couple from Edinburgh asking where the spa was," Megan said as she refilled my coffee cup.

"I told them the spa was the sea loch and the massage therapist was a paddle."

"Did they stay?" I asked.

"Three days. Spent most of them complaining about the Wi-Fi signal."

Fiona smiled but did not join in. She ate quickly and excused herself to deal with paperwork in her office. The rest of us lingered over coffee as the sky outside faded from grey to black.

"You'll like it here," Rory said as we finally cleared the table. "Takes a few days to get used to the quiet, but then you start sleeping better than you have in years."

"The silence is the best part," Megan added. "No blue lights, no traffic, no noisy neighbours playing music at all hours. Just wind and water."

Callum walked back to our cabin with me, pointing out landmarks in the darkness. Small veranda lamps outside the guest lodges created pools of yellow among the trees. Beyond them, the plantation was completely black.

"Guests usually turn in early," he said. "There isn't much to do after dark except read or play cards. Some bring board games."

"What do you do?"

"Read, mostly. Sometimes I walk down to the jetty and listen to the water. It's peaceful."

My first week passed exactly as advertised. I settled into a routine of grounds work and small repairs that kept me occupied without becoming demanding. Most of the guests were middle-aged couples who wanted help with their luggage and directions to the walking trails. They ate quietly, photographed the scenery and left on the Thursday guest launch looking more relaxed than when they had arrived. The next group came in on the same weekly sailing.

Callum and I worked well together. He knew which areas needed attention, and his building-site experience meant he could fix problems without making them worse. We replaced several loose boards on the jetty, trimmed the hedges around the guest lodges and repaired a section of fence damaged by falling branches.

The island was more beautiful than I had expected. When the fog lifted, I could see the hills of the mainland rising beyond the dark water. Seals sunned themselves on rocks near the shore, and sea eagles circled above the water in search of fish. Trails through the plantation led to small clearings overlooking hidden coves and beaches strewn with driftwood.

By my eighth day, I felt I had found exactly what I had been looking for. The work was satisfying, my colleagues were good company, and the isolation Malcolm had warned me about felt more like freedom than confinement.

I was cutting a hedge near the edge of the plantation that morning when I first saw her. The hedge marked the boundary between the retreat grounds and the wild northern part of the island, a neat green line separating mown grass and gravel from tangled undergrowth and trees.

I had been working steadily for about an hour, cutting back spring growth that had begun to encroach upon the path. The hedge cutter was loud enough that I had to stop occasionally and listen for guests approaching nearby. During one of those pauses, I noticed movement between the trees.

At first I thought it might be a deer. A small population lived on the island and sometimes wandered near the retreat in search of food. Then I looked more closely and realised it was a person.

A woman stood motionless about 45 metres inside the plantation, perfectly still among the dark trunks.

She wore a scarlet evening dress with an old-fashioned cut. Its colour stood out against the green and brown of the woods like paint splashed across a canvas. The dress was elegant and utterly wrong for the surroundings.

I put down the hedge cutter and wiped the sweat from my forehead. The woman had not moved since I first noticed her. Her arms hung at her sides and she faced me directly, staring with an intensity that made my skin prickle.

"Hello!" I called, raising my voice to carry across the distance.

There was no response. She remained as still as a statue placed among the trees. From where I stood, I could not make out her features clearly, but I knew she was looking at me with unwavering attention.

I took several steps towards the edge of the plantation and stopped where the maintained grounds gave way to the undergrowth.

"Are you all right?"

Still nothing.

She continued to stare without moving or acknowledging my voice. The scarlet dress hung perfectly straight, as though no breath of wind reached the place where she stood. Something about her stillness unsettled me. People did not remain so motionless, so fixed upon another person, without a reason.

I had not seen any of the guests wearing a dress like that, and I could not imagine why anyone would walk into the woods dressed for an evening engagement.

I waited several minutes, watching for any movement or response. She remained exactly as I had first seen her, arms at her sides, her face turned towards me, the scarlet fabric burning against the dark trees.

The longer I watched, the more uncomfortable I became. At last I picked up the hedge cutter and returned to work. Its motor filled the air, drowning the quieter sounds of the plantation. I kept glancing at the trees, checking that she was still there.

When I looked again ten minutes later, she had vanished.

The woman bothered me for the rest of the day. By the time Callum and I returned to the cabin to make dinner, I could no longer keep the encounter to myself.

Our room had already acquired a few personal touches. Callum had pinned a photograph of his family in Lanarkshire above his bed, and I had left a paperback on the bedside table between us.

"Fancy pasta tonight?" Callum asked, holding up a packet. "I brought some tomato sauce over from the kitchen."

"Sure."

I sat at the table and watched him move around the cramped kitchenette. He worked efficiently, perhaps because he had lived on his own at university. He filled a saucepan with water and put it on the hob, then opened the sauce. I waited until everything was heating before I mentioned it.

"You know when we were working on the north side today?"

"Yeah."

Callum stirred the sauce with a wooden spoon. "What about it?"

"I saw someone in the woods. A woman."

He glanced over his shoulder. "Probably a guest."

"She was wearing a scarlet evening dress. Old-fashioned, formal. Nothing you'd wear for walking."

He turned back to the hob. "People with money wear strange things sometimes. Remember that bloke yesterday with the designer walking boots? They probably cost more than we earn in a month."

The water began to boil and he added the pasta. I watched him work, trying to find a way to explain what had disturbed me.

"She wasn't moving," I said at last.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean she stood there for about twenty-five minutes without moving at all. She just stared at me."

Callum laughed. "Come on, twenty-five minutes? You were working. It probably felt longer than it was."

"I checked my watch. I looked at her, went back to work and looked again. She was in exactly the same position."

"Maybe she was taking photographs on her phone."

I shook my head. "She wasn't holding anything. Her hands were hanging at her sides. I called to her and she didn't respond."

Callum drained the pasta, mixed in the sauce and divided it between two bowls. He brought them to the table and sat opposite me.

"Look, Jamie, these guests pay a lot of money to come here. Some of them are bound to be eccentric. Maybe she was meditating or doing some sort of nature exercise. Wealthy people are into odd things like that."

I picked up my fork but did not begin eating.

"She disappeared."

"What?"

"When I looked again, she was gone. No sound, nothing. One moment she was there and the next she wasn't."

Callum took a mouthful of pasta and chewed thoughtfully.

"She probably walked back to the trail when you weren't looking. It's thick in there. Easy to lose sight of someone."

"I would have heard her moving through the trees."

"Not necessarily. You had the hedge cutter running most of the time, didn't you? I was making enough noise with that broken sprinkler as well. Between us, we wouldn't have heard much."

I wanted to argue, but I could not. He was right about the noise. The hedge cutter was deafening, and Callum had spent much of the afternoon swearing as he wrestled with a damaged sprinkler head. I might not have heard footsteps.

"I suppose so," I said.

"Trust me. She was just a guest who wandered off the marked trail and didn't want to admit she was lost when you called to her. Some of them have serious pride issues."

Callum seemed entirely unconcerned. He ate his pasta and talked about the work planned for the next day: securing a loose board on the main jetty and checking the watering system on the southern lawn. Ordinary, everyday jobs.

His casual manner made me feel faintly ridiculous for being so unsettled. After dinner we played cards and watched a film on his laptop. He behaved as though our conversation had never happened, joking and talking about what he intended to do with the wages he was saving.

By the time we went to bed, I had almost persuaded myself that he was right. She had been nothing more than a guest who had strayed off the path.

Even so, I struggled to sleep.

The next three days passed without incident. Callum and I returned to our routine: breakfast with Rory and Megan, a full day of maintenance, dinner and cards in the evening.

I helped Callum replace the loose jetty board, and we spent one morning clearing scrub from around the activity centre. It was ordinary work that kept my hands busy and my thoughts occupied. I did not see the woman again, and I began to think Callum had been right all along. Perhaps the isolation had affected me more than I realised.

Malcolm's warning about the island getting to people had stayed with me. Perhaps I had been looking for something wrong when there was nothing there.

On Thursday morning, after the guest launch had completed its weekly changeover, Callum and I were assigned to work on the jetty. Several support posts needed reinforcing, and loose decking had become a safety hazard. Fiona had made it clear that guest safety was our first priority, especially near the water.

The jetty extended roughly twelve metres into the bay and served six small berths. Only three were occupied: two sailing boats and a small motorboat belonging to a family staying in Lodge 6. The water was calm that morning, barely touching the supports.

Callum tightened the bolts securing the structure to its posts while I replaced decking near the far end. The work required concentration. One careless step and I would have gone into the water with the toolbox. I measured each board, marked the cuts and trimmed it with the circular saw.

We had been working for about two hours when I straightened to ease my back. The morning fog had burnt away completely, leaving the bay bright beneath the sun. Across the water, the mainland was a hazy strip of buildings and wooded hills.

That was when I saw her.

She stood at the edge of the plantation, about 55 metres from the jetty. It was the same woman in the same scarlet evening dress. The fabric seemed to glow against the pines and birches behind her, as though a light shone upon her alone.

I dropped my hammer. It struck the boards with a sharp clang and rolled towards the edge.

"Careful," Callum called behind me.

He was still working on a support post, his back to the shore. The woman stared directly at me, just as she had before. Her arms hung straight at her sides and she stood perfectly still. Even at that distance, I could feel her eyes fixed upon me.

"Callum."

"What?"

"Look towards the trees. Do you see her?"

Callum raised his head and followed my gaze. He looked for several seconds, then returned to the bolt.

"See who?"

"The woman in the red dress. She's right there."

He looked again, for longer this time.

"I don't see anyone, Jamie."

I stared at him. "She's standing at the tree line. Scarlet dress, long dark hair."

"There's nobody there."

I turned back. The woman had not moved. Against the green plantation, the dress was impossible to miss.

"You're telling me you can't see a woman standing between those two big Scots pines?"

Callum set down his spanner and came to stand beside me. He studied the exact place I indicated.

"Jamie, there's nobody there. Just trees."

My heart began beating faster. Either Callum was lying or something was seriously wrong with me. I could see her as clearly as I could see him.

"I'm going over there."

"What? Why?"

I did not answer. I climbed from the jetty onto the shore and started towards the plantation. Callum called my name behind me, but I kept walking.

The woman watched me approach. She did not move, blink or react as the distance closed. Her face was pale and expressionless. Dark hair fell straight past her shoulders. The scarlet dress looked costly, the sort of thing someone might wear to a formal dinner or the theatre, not to stand among wet branches and bracken.

I had come within about 18 metres when she vanished.

She did not walk away or slip behind a tree. She vanished.

One moment she was solid and real. The next there was only empty woodland.

I stopped and stared at the place where she had stood. Two large pines rose with a narrow gap between them, exactly where I had seen her. I approached slowly, searching for any sign that someone had been there.

The ground was covered by pine needles, fallen birch leaves and damp twigs. I crouched and brushed the debris aside to examine the soil beneath. If a person had stood there, there should have been some impression: a footprint, displaced earth, anything.

There was nothing.

I spent ten minutes searching around the trees. I found no footprints, snapped branches or crushed plants. The forest floor appeared untouched, as though nobody had crossed it in months.

"Jamie!" Callum's voice carried from the jetty. "What are you doing?"

I rose and brushed the dirt from my knees. He stood with his hands on his hips, watching me in confusion.

"Looking for footprints," I called.

"Find any?"

"No."

I walked back towards him with my thoughts racing. Either I was losing my grasp on reality or something very strange was happening on Blackwater Island. The woman had been real. I was certain of it. I had seen her clearly in broad daylight from 18 metres away, yet Callum could not see her and she had left no trace.

"Are you all right?" he asked when I climbed back onto the jetty.

"Yeah. I'm fine."

I was not fine.

That night I lay awake, staring at the ceiling and thinking about the woman in the scarlet dress. Whenever I closed my eyes, I saw her pale face and expressionless stare. Sleep came in short, restless intervals, broken by dreams I could not remember upon waking.

The following day I could barely concentrate. Callum and I were repairing a section of fence near the activity centre, but I kept looking towards the plantation, half expecting to find the woman watching from between the trees. Callum noticed my distraction but said nothing. He simply took on more of the work, moving with the same steady efficiency he had shown since I arrived.

Something had changed between us. His casual dismissal of what I had seen, and his complete inability to see the woman when she was standing in plain view, disturbed me more than I wanted to admit. Either he had lied to me for some reason or I was seeing things that did not exist. Neither possibility was comforting.

That evening, as we prepared dinner, Callum behaved as though nothing had happened. He talked about his plans for the weekend, mentioned a letter from his sister in Lanarkshire and asked whether I wanted to join the others for cards after we ate. His conversation was normal, friendly and relaxed.

I wanted to raise the subject again and make him understand what I had seen, but each time I began to speak I stopped myself. What was the point? He had already made it clear that he thought I was imagining things. Pressing the issue would only make me seem more unstable.

I kept quiet and tried to behave normally, but the woman's image remained sharp in my memory: the scarlet dress, the pale skin, the unblinking stare and the absolute silence when she disappeared as though she had never been there.

Something was happening on Blackwater Island. Something Callum either could not see or did not want to acknowledge. I was beginning to realise I might be facing it alone.

Callum suggested the boat trip over breakfast on Friday morning. I was picking at my eggs, still distracted after the previous day's fence work, when he let his fork fall against his plate with a clatter.

"We should take the launch out this afternoon," he said. "See the coastline from the water."

Megan looked up from her coffee. "Are we allowed to use it?"

"Fiona mentioned it during my induction. Staff can use the retreat's motor launch for recreation if we clear it with her first and don't interfere with guest work."

Rory nodded as he spooned more porridge into his bowl. "Sounds good to me. I've been wanting to see more of the island."

I had not been thinking about boat trips. My thoughts kept returning to the woman in scarlet and the way she had disappeared without a trace. But perhaps getting away from the grounds for a while would clear my head. At least on the water, I would be away from the trees where I had begun to expect a flash of red in every shadow.

"All right," I said. "When were you thinking?"

"About 14:00. The weather's meant to stay clear."

Callum was already planning it, talking about checking the fuel, the lifejackets and the VHF set. He seemed more animated than he had in days, as though the prospect of going out on the water had given him something to focus on.

"I'll ask Fiona after breakfast," he said. "I'm sure she'll agree. It is our afternoon off."

Megan finished her coffee and stood. "I'd better prepare the lunch dishes before we go. Ailsa's covering the kitchen, but I want to leave everything ready."

Ailsa was a mainland relief worker who came over on the Thursday launch when Fiona needed extra kitchen cover. She was due to return to the mainland with Fiona on the following week's sailing.

"I can help," Rory offered.

"Thanks, but I've got it. Meet at the jetty at about two."

We agreed, and I felt something loosen in my chest. Perhaps this was exactly what I needed: time away from the grounds and the plantation, doing something ordinary with my colleagues that had nothing to do with mysterious women or missing footprints.

Callum collected our plates while I finished my orange juice.

"You seem better today," he said.

"Better how?"

"Less distracted. Yesterday you kept looking over your shoulder while we worked on that fence."

I had not realised he had noticed.

"Just tired, I suppose."

"A few hours on the water should sort that. Nothing clears your head like being out in the bay."

After breakfast, Callum went to find Fiona while the rest of us completed our morning jobs. I helped Rory strip and remake the beds in Lodges 3 and 4. He showed me how Fiona wanted the duvets smoothed, the fitted sheets pulled tight and the pillows arranged squarely against the headboards. By the time we finished, Callum had returned with permission to use the launch until 17:00.

"She said to remain within sight of the island and keep the VHF on Channel 16," he reported. "We have to check in every hour."

The afternoon was perfect for the water: a clear sky, a light breeze and a temperature of about 23 degrees Celsius.

Callum had inspected the boat before we reached the jetty. He had tested the outboard, checked the fuel tank and hose, confirmed the battery leads were secure and made sure there were enough lifejackets. The retreat's boat was a 6.5-metre open motor launch with a central helm and bench seating for six. Callum had laid the lifejackets across the seats and was testing the VHF when we arrived.

"Everyone know how to swim?" he asked.

We all said we could manage in the water, though Megan admitted she was not a strong swimmer. Callum gave her a place on the middle bench, where she would be safest, and showed her how to tighten her lifejacket.

"We'll follow the coast," he said as he started the outboard. "Just see what the island looks like from offshore."

I cast off the mooring lines while Rory pushed us clear of the jetty. Callum eased the throttle forwards, taking us slowly out of the bay before increasing speed in open water.

The island looked different from offshore, smaller somehow, yet more dramatic, with cliffs and rocky slopes rising directly from the sea. Callum followed the southern coast first and pointed out landmarks we recognised from our work around the grounds.

"There's the activity centre," Megan called, shading her eyes.

The building looked tiny from the water, tucked among the trees with only its roof and upper walls visible. We could also see the main lodge and several of the six guest lodges scattered through the plantation.

"Hard to believe we've been here nearly two weeks," Rory said.

Callum steered along the western shore, where the cliffs were highest. The water was a deep blue, and through the clear surface I could make out submerged rocks and beds of kelp. Several seals watched us from a low outcrop before slipping into the sea as we passed.

"This is brilliant," Megan said. "I had no idea it looked so beautiful from out here."

For the first time in days, I relaxed. The outboard and the wind made conversation difficult, so we mostly watched the coast pass. Callum appeared comfortable at the helm, keeping us well clear of the rocks while still giving us a good view of the island.

We had been out for about an hour when he turned towards the northern point. It was the part of the island I knew least, because our work kept us close to the retreat and the southern bay. The coast was different there, with fewer cliffs and more beaches.

Callum slowed as we rounded the point, and I moved towards the bow for a better view. The plantation descended almost to the water, leaving only a narrow strip of rocky beach between the trees and the bay.

That was when I saw her.

The woman in the scarlet dress stood at the water's edge, about 45 metres from the boat. Even from offshore, the colour was unmistakable against the dark pines and bent spruce behind her.

My stomach dropped.

She was here as well. She was not confined to the woods near our work sites. Wherever I went on the island, she appeared.

I was about to turn and tell the others when I heard Callum behind me.

"Jesus," he said softly.

I looked back. He was staring at the shore, gripping the wheel so hard that his knuckles had turned white. All colour had drained from his face.

He could see her.

After twice insisting that nobody was there, Callum could finally see the woman in scarlet.

"What is it?" Rory asked, following his gaze.

"On the beach," Callum said. "Can you see her?"

Megan shaded her eyes and squinted towards the shore. "See who?"

"The woman in red. Right there by the water."

Rory looked where Callum pointed. "I don't see anyone."

But Callum did. He was already turning the wheel and steering us towards the beach. The outboard dropped to an idle as we approached the rocky shallows.

"Callum, what are you doing?" Megan asked.

"There's someone on the beach. We need to check whether she needs help."

I watched his face as he manoeuvred closer. The easy confidence he had shown earlier was gone. He looked shaken, perhaps even frightened, but there was determination in him too, a need to reach the woman.

"I still don't see anyone," Rory said.

Callum did not answer. His attention remained fixed on the shore and on the figure only he and I could see.

When we were about six metres from the beach, he cut the outboard and lowered the anchor.

"I'm going ashore," he said.

"Callum, wait," I began, but he was already taking off his shoes and rolling up his trouser legs.

"Stay with the boat. I'll be right back."

"Do you want me to come with you?" I asked.

"No. Stay here."

Callum swung his legs over the side and lowered himself into the water, which reached his knees. He waded towards the shore, placing each foot carefully on the rocky bottom.

I watched him approach the woman. She remained perfectly still at the water's edge. From the boat, I could not make out her features clearly, but I could see her pale skin and the scarlet evening dress. She stood partly turned away from us now, gazing out across the water.

"What's he doing?" Megan asked.

"I'm not sure," I said.

Callum reached the beach and walked towards the woman. When he was about 18 metres away, he stopped and appeared to say something. I could not hear him over the waves breaking against the rocks, but I saw his mouth moving.

The woman turned towards him.

Even from the launch, I could tell she was facing Callum directly, just as she had faced me in the plantation. Callum went completely still, as though he had been frozen where he stood. They remained like that for several minutes: Callum rigid on the beach, the woman facing him without any visible movement.

There were no gestures and no conversation I could detect, only two figures standing motionless while the waves washed around Callum's boots.

"This is strange," Rory said. "How long is he going to stand there?"

I did not answer. I was watching Callum's posture, the way he held himself as though he were afraid to move. Whatever the woman was saying to him, or whatever was passing between them, it was not a normal conversation.

After what felt like ten minutes, Callum abruptly turned and strode back towards the water. He moved quickly, almost urgently, wading out to the launch without once looking behind him.

"Give me a hand up," he said when he reached the side.

Rory and I hauled him aboard. Callum's hands were shaking as he started the outboard. When I looked back towards the shore, the woman had gone.

"Callum, who was that?" Megan asked.

"Just someone who got separated from her group," he said. "She's fine."

His voice was strained, and he would not look directly at any of us. He raised the anchor and steered us away from the beach, opening the throttle harder than necessary.

"Did you recognise her?" I asked. "Was she one of the guests?"

"I don't know. Maybe."

Callum's usual easy conversation had vanished. He answered our questions in clipped phrases and kept his eyes fixed on the water ahead. His hands continued to tremble against the helm.

We completed the trip in near silence, following Blackwater Island's eastern shore back towards the retreat. Callum called in over the VHF and reported our position in a voice that sounded painfully forced in its normality.

The relaxed mood of the morning had been destroyed. When we came alongside the jetty, Callum was the first out of the launch.

"Thanks for coming," he said. "That was fun."

Nothing in his behaviour suggested he had enjoyed it. He helped secure the mooring lines and stow the lifejackets, but every movement had a hurried edge, as though he could not wait to get away from the sea.

"Are you all right?" I asked as we walked back towards the staff cabin.

"Fine. Just tired."

I knew he was lying. Callum had seen the woman in scarlet, and whatever had happened during those ten minutes on the beach had shaken him badly. His hands were still trembling when we reached our door.

Over the following four days, the change in him became impossible to dismiss.

The morning after the trip, Callum suggested we miss lunch with Rory and Megan, claiming we needed to finish repairs to the jetty before the next guests arrived. When I mentioned having dinner in the main lodge instead of cooking in our kitchenette, he insisted we had plenty of food and no reason to bother the kitchen staff.

"We should keep to ourselves a bit more," he said as he heated leftover pasta with tomato sauce on the hob. "The others have their own jobs. We don't want to distract them."

It was nothing like the Callum I had met. He had been organising shared dinners and card games since my first week. When I reminded him of that, he shrugged and said he was trying to be more professional.

His efforts to isolate us worsened over the next few days. He found reasons for us to work in remote parts of the retreat, away from the main buildings and any chance of encountering Rory or Megan. When Rory stopped at our cabin one evening to invite us to watch a film in the lodge, Callum claimed we were both exhausted and practically shut the door in his face.

"What was that about?" I asked.

"We see them enough while we're working," Callum replied. "We don't need to spend every spare minute together as well."

Strangest of all was the way he began shadowing me during our shifts. Before the boat trip, we had often divided the work to cover more ground, with one of us on the northern side of the retreat while the other dealt with jobs in the south. Now Callum insisted we remain together even when splitting up would have been quicker.

"It's safer this way," he said when I suggested taking three lodges each for the weekly maintenance checks. "If something goes wrong, we'll have someone there to help."

Nothing had ever gone wrong during a routine inspection. Yet Callum seemed genuinely anxious at the thought of us working apart. Whenever I moved more than a few metres away, he glanced over his shoulder to locate me.

Three days after the coastal trip, Fiona asked us to carry out the monthly check on the 6.5-metre open motor launch. It should have been straightforward: inspect the outboard, check its oil and fuel system, test the battery and electrics, and make certain the VHF and other equipment were ready for guest use.

Callum volunteered to deal with the outboard while I inspected the hull, anchor gear and deck fittings. I was testing the anchor winch when I heard the scrape of a spanner against metal at the stern.

"How does it look?" I called.

"Fine. Just tightening a couple of connections."

When I went aft, Callum had removed the cowling and was working on the fuel-hose connection. He was loosening it, not tightening it. Petrol had already begun to seep from the coupling, filling the stern with a sharp chemical smell.

"Callum, stop. You're undoing it."

He looked up with the startled expression of someone caught doing something forbidden.

"What? No, I'm just checking the fuel hose."

"You've loosened the connection. Look at it."

He stared at the dripping fuel for several seconds, then hurriedly tightened the coupling.

"Sorry. I turned it the wrong way."

That might have been believable from someone else. Callum had worked competently on a Glasgow building site and had spent several weeks repairing irrigation pipes, mowers, jetty fittings and other equipment at Blackwater Island Retreat. He knew how to use a spanner.

"Are you feeling all right?" I asked.

"Aye. Just tired. These checks are tedious."

As we continued, I found more problems. The battery leads had been disconnected and left loose. The oil dipstick was missing. The VHF aerial connection had been partly unscrewed. Each time I pointed something out, Callum dismissed it as an oversight or accident.

"Did you disconnect these battery leads?"

"I must have knocked them while I was checking the oil."

"The dipstick's gone. Did you drop it?"

"It was loose when I started. It might have fallen into the water."

"And the aerial connection is barely attached."

"I was testing it. Must have forgotten to tighten it again."

There were too many accidents for a man who had been doing capable maintenance work for weeks and had years of trade experience behind him. By the end of the inspection, the launch was unfit for use. The outboard would not start, and the VHF could neither transmit nor receive. We spent two additional hours correcting faults that should never have existed.

"We'll have to report this to Fiona," I said as we secured the launch.

"Report what?"

"The state we found it in. She'll want to know why the monthly check took so long."

Callum went silent.

"Maybe she doesn't need every detail. We've fixed it all, haven't we? The launch works now."

"She'll ask why it took four hours instead of two."

"We can say we were thorough. Took our time and made certain everything was perfect."

That was when I understood that he had sabotaged it deliberately. The loose leads, missing dipstick, loosened fuel connection and useless aerial had not been a collection of mistakes. He had been disabling the launch one system at a time while pretending to service it.

I could think of only one reason: he did not want anyone taking it out again.

I went along with his explanation when we reported to Fiona, largely because I did not know how to voice my suspicions without sounding absurd. The work was complete and the launch appeared functional. Fiona accepted our assurance, though she reminded Callum that she would need it for the following Thursday's guest changeover.

That Thursday, the last guests departed for the mainland. Fiona travelled with them to deal with suppliers and accounts near Largs, and Ailsa, the mainland relief worker who had been covering in the kitchen, left on the same launch. The retreat was closing for a changeover and maintenance week before the next party arrived. Only Callum, Rory, Megan and I remained on Blackwater Island.

That night, I woke to find the other bed empty.

Callum's covers had been drawn back. The room was dark except for a faint wash of moonlight through the single window. His work boots were gone from beside the door.

I called his name softly. There was no reply.

I dressed and stepped outside. The cold air carried the smell of wet earth and salt. Behind the cabin, the mixed plantation of Scots pine, birch and wind-bent spruce formed a wall of black trunks and tangled shadow.

Callum stood just inside it.

He was perhaps 20 metres away, facing deeper into the trees with his arms hanging straight by his sides. He wore his trousers, shirt and boots, but no jacket. The wind stirred the branches above him and shifted the grass around his ankles. He did not move with any of it.

"Callum?"

He gave no sign that he had heard me.

I moved a little nearer, unwilling to enter the trees fully.

"Callum, what are you doing?"

Nothing. His posture was the same unnatural rigidity I had seen on the northern beach. I called again and again, first quietly, then loudly enough that Rory or Megan might have heard from the other staff accommodation. Callum never turned.

For about twenty minutes I watched him stand there, as motionless as the woman in the scarlet evening dress. Then, without warning, he turned and walked towards me.

His eyes were open, but his expression was vacant. He passed within a metre of me without acknowledging my presence, crossed the clearing and entered our cabin. By the time I followed, he was removing his boots. He placed them neatly by the door, climbed into bed and pulled the duvet to his chin.

His movements were casual and practised, exactly as they had been every night since I arrived. He closed his eyes and settled against the pillow.

"Where were you?" I asked.

"What do you mean?" His voice was muffled by the pillow.

"You were gone. I woke up and your bed was empty."

Callum rolled over to face me. In the dim light I saw genuine confusion in his expression.

"I've been here all night, mate. You must have been dreaming."

I sat straighter on my bed.

"I looked for you. I found you standing in the trees behind the cabin."

"That's impossible." He propped himself on one elbow. "I haven't left this room since we came back from dinner."

The certainty in his voice made my skin crawl. He was not lying. At least, he did not believe he was.

"I watched you for twenty minutes. You were facing the plantation and you wouldn't answer when I called."

Callum shook his head.

"Jamie, I think you're having some sort of stress reaction. Maybe the isolation's affecting you more than you realise."

There it was again: the same dismissive tone he had used after I first told him about the woman in scarlet, the same suggestion that my mind was deceiving me.

"I know what I saw."

"Look, I understand. This place can get inside your head. Malcolm warned you about that on the crossing, didn't he? But I've been asleep for hours. Check my side of the room if you like. My boots are by the door exactly where I left them."

I looked. His boots sat in their usual place, their laces tucked inside. That proved nothing. I had watched him put them there.

"Try to get some sleep," Callum said. "We've got that irrigation repair in the morning."

He lay down again. Within minutes, his breathing settled into the slow rhythm of sleep, as though our conversation had never occurred.

I remained awake. Whatever had happened to Callum had begun on that beach. The woman had faced him for ten silent minutes, and from then on he had become secretive, possessive and afraid of anyone leaving. Now his body was carrying him into the plantation while his sleeping mind remembered nothing.

Perhaps his encounter with her had affected his memory. That did not explain his calculated attempts to disable the launch or his determination to control every hour of my day.

I thought of him standing among the trees with his arms at his sides, held in the same unnatural posture as the woman on the beach. She was gone, but her influence was not. Whatever she had said or done during those minutes on the shore was still drawing him towards the island's interior.

Beyond the window, the tops of the Scots pines and spruces swayed in the sea wind. Their branches cast shifting shadows in the moonlight. Somewhere beyond them, something was waiting.

Callum had no memory of leaving the cabin and no awareness of the twenty minutes he had spent among the trees, but his body had known where to go. In the morning he would act as if nothing had happened. He would follow my every movement and invent fresh reasons to keep us apart from Rory and Megan.

Whatever was happening to him, I seemed to be the only person who could see it, and I had no idea how to stop it.

The morning routine felt like crossing a minefield. I took my jacket from the hook beside the door, keeping my movements casual while Callum watched me from his bed. He had begun doing that more often, following every gesture and every glance towards the window.

"Ready for breakfast?" I asked, forcing an ordinary tone.

Callum swung his legs off the bed and reached for his boots. "Aye. Let's go."

We walked to the lodge together. The moment we entered, I tried to gain a little distance.

"I need something from the supply cupboard first. I'll meet you at the table."

His jaw tightened. "I'll come with you."

"It's only cleaning materials for the decking. Won't take a second."

"I said I'll come with you."

The flatness of his voice allowed no argument. I nodded and headed for the stores with him directly behind me. The cupboard smelt of pine disinfectant and dust. I took a tin of decking stain we did not need while Callum stood in the doorway watching me.

Rory and Megan were eating when we reached their table. Megan looked up with her usual smile, but I caught the hesitation in it when she saw Callum's expression.

"Morning. Sleep well?"

"Fine," I said, sitting opposite her.

Callum chose the chair beside mine, closer than was necessary. Rory pushed a plate of toast towards the middle of the table.

"Ailsa left us plenty before she went. There are eggs, toast, porridge and orange juice. Thought we could use a proper breakfast before that fence repair."

Callum ignored the toast.

"Actually, Jamie and I should deal with the fence ourselves. Two people can manage it."

Megan's smile faded.

"I thought Fiona wanted all four of us on the perimeter today. There's a lot of ground to cover."

"We'll be more efficient with fewer people," Callum said. "Less coordination."

Rory and Megan exchanged a glance. I had noticed them doing that more frequently: quick, silent acknowledgements that Callum's behaviour was wrong. His determination to separate us had become too obvious to ignore.

"We could split into two pairs," I suggested. "We'd cover it faster."

Callum placed a hand on my shoulder.

"Jamie and I work well together. We've got a system."

The pressure of his fingers felt deliberate, a warning disguised as familiarity. I ate some egg and tried to think of a way to signal that I needed to speak to Rory and Megan alone.

After breakfast, I excused myself to use the lavatory. Callum began to rise, caught himself and sat down again. I had perhaps three minutes.

I found Rory in the corridor carrying clean towels towards the guest lodges.

"Can I ask you something?" I said quietly.

He stopped. "Of course. What's wrong?"

"Have you noticed anything strange about Callum lately?"

Rory glanced along the corridor to make certain we were alone.

"You mean the way he's behaving like your shadow? Megan and I were talking about it. It's getting worse."

"He won't let me work with either of you. He won't let me go anywhere alone."

Rory frowned. "That's not normal, Jamie. You're not his responsibility."

"I know. Every time I try to do something by myself, he invents a reason for us to stay together. And he's started saying we shouldn't trust people who want to leave the island early."

"Who wants to leave?"

"Nobody, as far as I know. That's what makes it so strange."

Rory shifted the towels to one arm.

"You should speak to Fiona when we can reach her. She could assign one of you to different duties."

The thought had occurred to me, but I dismissed it. Callum would know I had complained. Lately, the prospect of making him angry had begun to feel dangerous in a way I could not explain.

"I'll think about it."

Footsteps sounded from the dining room. Callum appeared at the far end of the corridor, his expression unreadable.

"There you are," he said. "Ready to start on that fence?"

Rory gave me a significant look before continuing towards the lodges. I followed Callum outside with the sick feeling that I was being led somewhere from which I might not return.

The repair took us to the far boundary of the retreat, where several timber posts had rotted at ground level. We spent the first hour replacing boards and tightening wire in silence. Even when I was not looking at him, I could feel Callum watching me.

"You know," he said as he drove a nail into a new board, "Rory's been asking a lot of questions lately."

I kept my attention on the wire I was tensioning. "What sort of questions?"

"About the launch. About when the next mainland boat is coming. Whether staff can leave before their contracts finish."

It was not true. Rory had never mentioned any of those things to me, yet Callum spoke with such certainty that for a moment I wondered whether I had missed something.

"People get curious," I said. "It doesn't mean anything."

Callum put down his hammer and looked directly at me.

"It means they aren't committed to finishing what they started. It means they're thinking of running away as soon as things become difficult."

"Nothing's difficult, Callum. We're doing maintenance work."

"Are we?" That dead, level quality had entered his voice again. "Because it seems as though everyone's looking for excuses not to spend time together. As if they're planning something."

I straightened and faced him. "What would they be planning?"

"I don't know. But we need to be careful who we trust."

The conversation felt like stepping into a bog. Every answer I could imagine threatened to drag me further in. I picked up my tools and moved to the next section of fence.

Callum followed, staying close enough that I could hear him breathe.

By lunchtime, I had made a decision. I had to speak to Megan and Rory without him present, which meant creating an opportunity myself.

"I'm going to fetch a sandwich," I said after we secured the final post.

"I'll come with you."

"Could you clear the tools instead? I'll bring something back for you."

His eyes narrowed. "I'd rather we went together."

"It'll be quicker if we split up. Give me five minutes, then we can carry on."

For a moment, I thought he would refuse. At last he nodded, though his expression remained tense.

I walked towards the lodge without looking behind me. Megan was alone in the kitchen, preparing sandwiches for the afternoon.

"I need to tell you something," I said, checking the doorway.

She looked up from the worktop. "What's wrong? You look upset."

"It's Callum. He's been..."

I struggled to find words that did not sound mad.

"He's become possessive. He won't let me work with anybody else. He follows me everywhere. Now he's saying strange things about Rory and claiming he's asked suspicious questions."

Megan set down the knife.

"What sort of strange things?"

"He thinks Rory means to leave early. He thinks the two of you are plotting behind his back."

"That's ridiculous. Neither of us has said anything about leaving."

"I know. But Callum seems convinced that anyone who wants privacy must be planning something dangerous."

Megan wiped her hands on her apron, her expression troubled.

"Jamie, that isn't normal. It's controlling. You need to tell Fiona."

"I'm worried about what Callum might do if he thinks I've complained."

"What do you mean, what he might do?"

Before I could answer, footsteps approached. Callum appeared in the kitchen doorway, his gaze moving from Megan to me.

"Ready to go back out?" he asked.

"Just collecting lunch." I reached for one of the sandwiches.

Callum entered the kitchen.

"What were you talking about?"

Megan forced a smile. "Tonight's dinner."

"Really? It looked rather serious for a discussion about a menu."

The silence lengthened. Megan began wrapping sandwiches, and I saw a tremor in her hands.

"We should get back to work," I said.

Callum nodded, but kept his eyes on Megan.

"If something about the way things are being run is bothering you, Megan, you can speak to me. We're all on the same team."

"Everything's fine," she said quickly. "I'm just concentrating on getting through the season."

"Good. It would be a shame if anyone thought they needed to change their situation here. The island's a special place. It deserves people who appreciate what it gives them."

The words sounded friendly. His tone made them a threat.

We left Megan in the kitchen and returned towards the fence, but Callum suggested checking the jetty instead.

"Why?" I asked.

"I want to make certain everything's secure. The weather's been rough."

The sea had been calm for days. I followed him down to the small jetty, trying to understand what he meant to do.

The launch occupied one of the six berths, apparently just as we had left it after correcting Callum's sabotage. He walked the length of the jetty, checking cleats and mooring lines with exaggerated care.

"You know," he said, crouching beside the outboard, "it's probably for the best that this launch isn't reliable just now."

"Why?"

"People might get ideas about making trips they shouldn't."

I watched him run a hand over the cowling. "What sort of trips?"

"The sort that end badly. The sea can be dangerous, particularly for people who don't know what they're doing."

"We can all swim."

He stood and looked at me.

"Swimming won't help if you're too far offshore, or the engine fails in bad weather, or you meet something unexpected out there."

Something unexpected, I thought. A woman in a scarlet evening dress standing on an empty beach.

"The launch is safe where it is," he continued. "Just as we're safer if we stay together on the island."

I nodded, but my thoughts were racing. Callum was not merely trying to prevent us using the launch. He wanted me to understand that he would stop us.

That evening I missed dinner in the lodge. I told Callum I felt unwell and needed to rest in the cabin. He offered to bring food, but I insisted I only wanted sleep.

Once he left, I expected to have perhaps an hour before he returned to check on me. I slipped outside and hurried to the retreat office. Fiona had shown us the emergency equipment during my first week: a VHF set for marine communications and a satellite telephone for contacting the mainland when there was no mobile signal.

The office door was locked.

I tried the handle twice, wondering whether it had stuck. It had not. A new deadbolt had been fitted since Fiona left. Callum had maintenance keys and access to the retreat's tools; he could have installed it without difficulty.

I went to the window and peered inside. The room was dark. I could see the desk where the equipment had stood, but the VHF set and satellite telephone were gone.

My stomach tightened. Callum had been busy.

The window was fastened. Breaking it would leave obvious evidence, and I was not yet ready for that confrontation.

Footsteps crunched over the gravel behind me. Callum approached from the lodge carrying a plate beneath a folded napkin.

"Feeling better?" he asked.

"A little. I needed some air."

He gave me the plate. "I brought your dinner. Megan made extra cottage pie."

"Thanks."

We returned to the cabin together. Callum seemed relaxed, almost cheerful, as though he had solved a problem. I picked at the cottage pie while he read on his bed. The ordinariness of it felt unreal.

"Callum," I said at last.

"Aye?"

"When is the next launch due?"

He looked up from his book.

"It isn't. Fiona sent word through the office before the equipment developed a fault. The guest sailing next Thursday has been cancelled because this launch can't be trusted and we can't confirm arrangements with the harbour. The next mainland collection we know is coming is a fortnight away. Why?"

"I was only keeping track of the time."

"You're not thinking about leaving early, are you?"

The question sounded casual, but there was steel beneath it.

"No."

"Good. I think we've got something worthwhile here, all of us. It would be a shame to break it up before the season ends."

He returned to his book, though I could feel his attention remain on me.

I finished eating and prepared for bed, performing every familiar action while my mind worked frantically. Callum had removed the communications equipment. The launch had been sabotaged again, or he wanted me to believe it had. The next confirmed mainland collection was a fortnight away, and he watched every move I made.

I was trapped. But he did not know that I understood that yet. As long as I pretended everything was normal, I retained a small advantage.

I lay awake and listened until his breathing settled. I needed to discover where he had hidden the VHF and satellite telephone. I needed to learn whether the launch could be repaired without his knowledge. Above all, I needed to warn Rory and Megan without alerting him.

Whatever the woman had done on the beach, it was growing stronger. Callum's obsession with keeping us together, his suspicion of anyone who might leave and his methodical destruction of every escape route went far beyond jealousy or ordinary controlling behaviour.

He stirred and murmured something I could not understand. In the dark, his breathing deepened, as though some part of him had gone elsewhere.

I tried to devise a way to get all four of us off Blackwater Island before his behaviour became more dangerous.

Then I opened my eyes and understood that waiting for a perfect plan might leave me no chance at all.

Callum's breathing had settled into the deep, even rhythm I had learnt to recognise over the past few nights. It meant he was genuinely asleep, not pretending. I waited another ten minutes and counted every breath.

The shared room seemed smaller at night, as though the walls had edged inward while we were not looking. In the faint light through the window, Callum's face appeared peaceful, nothing like the tense and watchful face he wore by day.

I slipped from beneath the duvet. A floorboard creaked beneath my foot, and I froze. Callum did not stir.

I took my jacket from the chair and pulled on my boots, tightening the laces as quietly as I could. I put my wallet and small torch into my pockets.

The door handle turned slowly beneath my hand. I opened the door just wide enough to pass through, then closed it with scarcely a click.

Cold night air struck my face. The moon was three-quarters full, casting the retreat in silver light and dense black shadow. I drew a breath and started towards the jetty. Every step felt like the crossing of an invisible boundary.

Behind me, the cabin remained dark. Nothing moved at its window. Callum was still asleep.

The path wound through Scots pine, birch and wind-bent spruce. Their interlaced branches blocked most of the moonlight. I kept my torch switched off so its beam would not betray me. Gravel shifted softly beneath my boots, and from beyond the trees came the sound of water lapping against the shore.

The launch was exactly where we had left it. Its pale hull shone in the moonlight, making the 6.5-metre boat seem larger than it did by day.

I climbed aboard and went aft. A strong smell of petrol hung around the stern. It was stronger than it had been after our inspection, and I knew at once that Callum had loosened the fuel connection again.

Shielding the torch with one hand, I removed the outboard cowling and examined the engine. The damage matched the pattern I remembered. The fuel hose had been loosened at its coupling. The battery leads were disconnected. The dipstick was absent, and the VHF aerial connection had been unscrewed far enough to break contact.

I began with the fuel hose, wiping away what had leaked and pushing the coupling firmly home until it locked. I checked it twice, conscious that even a small leak could empty the portable tank or feed fuel into the bilge faster than the dashboard gauge revealed. The smell remained strong, and I left the stern open to the air while I worked.

I secured the battery leads with a spanner from the onboard toolkit. I found the dipstick wedged behind a spare lifejacket in the locker beneath the helm and returned it to the outboard, checking the oil before replacing the cowling. Finally, I tightened the aerial connection.

The VHF crackled when I switched it on. Faint voices came through from vessels out in the Firth of Clyde. I selected Channel 16, but before transmitting I hesitated. If the signal reached anyone, Callum might hear my voice from the shore or see the launch's lights before help could arrive. I decided to get clear first.

The fuel gauge showed a little over half a tank, but after smelling the leak I did not trust it. There appeared to be enough fuel remaining for the crossing if the connection held.

The key was still in the ignition from our official inspection. My hands shook when I turned it. The outboard cranked once, then again, before catching with a harsh cough.

The sound was enormous in the still night. It travelled over the bay and rebounded from the trees. I winced and pulled the throttle back to idle. The engine spluttered, missed and finally settled into an uneven rumble.

It did not sound healthy. I had no idea whether Callum's interference had caused damage I could not see, but it was running.

I released the stern line, then the bow. As I cast off the final line, the launch drifted away from the jetty and the current began to carry it towards open water. I returned to the helm and engaged forward gear. The outboard coughed, and the boat began to move.

I kept the throttle low until I had cleared the jetty and the sheltered bay. Behind me, the retreat buildings diminished against the plantation. The main lodge was a dark mass among the trees, with only a few security lights marking the paths towards Lodges 1 to 6.

The empty retreat looked peaceful, like an advertisement for an island holiday.

Then I heard my name.

"Jamie!"

The voice travelled faintly but unmistakably across the water.

Callum.

I looked back. A figure was running down the path from the staff cabin. Even at that distance, I recognised Callum's height and the way he moved.

"Jamie, where are you going?"

I pushed the throttle forwards. The outboard answered with a succession of coughs and a cloud of dark exhaust, but the launch gained speed. The gap between me and Blackwater Island widened.

Callum reached the end of the jetty and stopped, cupping his hands around his mouth.

"Come back! You don't understand!"

His voice was desperate, almost panicked, nothing like the calm, controlling tone he had used for days.

I kept the bow pointed towards the lights on the North Ayrshire coast and watched the compass to hold my course.

"Jamie, she's here!" he shouted. "She wants to talk to you!"

I opened the throttle further. The outboard protested with more smoke and a grinding vibration that travelled through the helm. Still the launch pressed on. The mainland remained a low scattering of lights across the dark water, but it was coming nearer.

I looked back once more, expecting to see Callum alone.

Two figures stood side by side at the water's edge.

Callum and the woman.

Her scarlet evening dress appeared to glow beneath the moon, its old-fashioned skirts untouched by the wind. She stood perfectly still beside him, both of them facing me across the widening stretch of water.

She had been invisible to him at the jetty before our trip. He had first seen her on the northern beach. Now they stood together as though they had been waiting for this moment.

Although more than 90 metres separated us, I saw her face with impossible clarity. Her skin was pale, almost white beneath the moon. Straight dark hair hung motionless despite the wind striking my own face.

Her mouth had opened into a grin.

It stretched almost from ear to ear, far too wide for a human face. It was the smile of a nightmare fixed upon a real woman standing on a real Scottish island. Her teeth seemed too white and too numerous, row upon row retreating farther into her mouth than they could possibly go.

Distance should have blurred those details. Instead, every one of them remained sharp, as though she were standing beside me at the helm.

I tore my gaze away and concentrated on the compass and the engine instruments, on anything except the two figures watching from the shore.

The mainland lights crept closer. The outboard continued to drive me forwards through occasional bursts of mist, but the petrol smell had followed me from the berth and was growing stronger. The gauge still claimed there was fuel in the tank, yet its needle flickered with every vibration. Either it was unreliable or the loosened coupling had allowed far more petrol to escape than I had realised.

Whatever had taken hold of Callum remained behind on Blackwater Island, standing beside him and watching me flee with that impossible smile.

The launch lurched. The outboard missed several beats, caught again and gave a ragged burst of power. I held my breath, waiting for it to fail and leave me adrift in the middle of the channel.

For another minute it carried me away from the island and towards the mainland.

I did not look back again.

Then the outboard gave one final, shuddering cough and died.

I turned the key again and again, but nothing happened. The sudden silence felt wrong after the grinding of the outboard that had carried me across the channel. I looked at the fuel gauge. The needle had dropped to empty.

Callum's sabotage had been more thorough than I had realised. The gauge had never been reliable, and the loosened connection on the fuel hose must have been leaking throughout the crossing, draining away what little petrol remained in the tank. That explained the strong smell I had noticed before leaving Blackwater Island and been too desperate to investigate.

I was perhaps half a nautical mile from the mainland, close enough to distinguish individual windows and lights, but still surrounded by the dark, cold waters of the Firth of Clyde. The launch drifted with the current, which seemed to be carrying me towards a cluster of boats on the mainland shore.

I could make out fishing vessels in a tiny marina with a short jetty and six berths. The water looked black and hostile, but I had little choice. Swimming in the Clyde at night was hardly appealing, but remaining aboard a dead launch would get me nowhere. I kicked off my boots and pulled off my jacket.

The night air struck my skin and made me shiver at once. The water would be worse. I had grown up swimming in lochs and reservoirs near home, but this was the Scottish sea in late spring, cold enough to kill me if I took too long reaching shore.

I climbed over the side and dropped into the water.

The cold hit like a physical blow. My entire body seized, and for a moment I had to fight the instinct to gasp and suck in water. The current was stronger than I had expected, dragging me sideways almost as quickly as I could swim forwards.

I struck out towards the lights, trying to keep my breathing steady and my strokes even. My clothes weighed me down, but I did not want to waste time treading water while I struggled out of them. The marina looked closer now, perhaps four hundred metres away. I could make it.

I had to make it.

The cold worked its way into my muscles, making every stroke harder than the one before. My legs felt heavy and clumsy. I fixed my eyes on the lights along the jetty and counted my strokes to keep my mind occupied.

Twenty. Thirty. Forty.

The lights were definitely growing larger. Something brushed my leg beneath the water and I nearly panicked before deciding it was only seaweed. I kept swimming, forcing myself not to think about what else might be moving in the darkness with me.

Only the lights ahead. Only the shore.

At last my hand struck something solid. It was a wooden piling crusted with barnacles, which scraped my palms as I clung to it. I worked my way along the pilings until I found a ladder fixed to the side of the jetty. My arms shook violently as I hauled myself up, water streaming from my clothes.

I lay on the boards for several minutes, shivering and trying to catch my breath. The marina was little more than the six berths, occupied by fishing boats and two small sailing yachts. A single light shone in the harbour office at the landward end of the jetty.

I forced myself to stand and staggered towards it, my wet socks squelching against the boards.

The office door was unlocked. Inside was a desk, a VHF set and a telephone. An older man in a checked flannel shirt looked up from a mug of coffee and a paperback novel. A brass nameplate on the desk identified him as Douglas Muir, the marina attendant.

"Christ, son. What happened to you?"

"I need to call the Coastguard," I said.

My teeth were chattering so hard that I could barely form the words. Douglas pulled a towel from a cupboard behind the desk and handed it to me, then pointed towards the telephone.

"Did you fall off a boat?"

I lifted the receiver and dialled 999.

When the operator answered, I asked for the Coastguard and tried to keep my voice steady while I waited to be connected.

"My name is Jamie Mercer. I need to report an emergency at Blackwater Island Retreat. There are people in danger."

The Coastguard operator asked for my location and the nature of the emergency. I gave the name of the marina, which Douglas confirmed, then tried to explain what had happened without sounding completely mad.

"There's a man called Callum Fraser who's been behaving erratically and making threats. He sabotaged our boat to stop anyone leaving the island. There are two other members of staff there, Rory Bennett and Megan Price, and I'm afraid for their safety."

"Are you reporting a hostage situation, sir?"

I hesitated. Was that what it had become?

"I don't know. Maybe. Callum's behaviour changed after he encountered someone on the island. A woman. But there was something wrong with her. Something that wasn't normal."

The operator told me to remain on the line while HM Coastguard coordinated the response.

Douglas brought me another towel and a mug of coffee. It burned my throat, but the heat began to ease the shivering. About twenty minutes later, an RNLI lifeboat reached the marina. Two HM Coastguard rescue officers arrived by road at almost the same time. They assessed me for cold-water exposure and took an initial account while the lifeboat crew prepared to head towards Blackwater Island.

I told them everything I could remember about Callum's behaviour, the sabotaged launch, the missing communications equipment and the woman in the scarlet evening dress. I described Rory and Megan, gave their physical descriptions and told them what I knew about their backgrounds. I explained the layout of the retreat, including the main lodge, the six guest lodges, the activity centre, the staff cabin and the locked tool store where I believed Callum had hidden the VHF set and satellite telephone.

I also explained that Fiona Kershaw had left with Ailsa, the mainland relief worker, on the previous Thursday guest launch to deal with retreat business ashore. The last guests had departed with them, leaving only the four of us on Blackwater Island during the closed changeover period. The next Thursday sailing had been cancelled after the retreat launch and communications were disabled, and the next confirmed mainland collection was not due for a fortnight.

"We'll need a full statement," one of the Coastguard officers said. "Police Scotland are on their way. They'll conduct the formal interviews."

I spent the next six hours at an HM Coastguard rescue station and then in a Police Scotland interview room, going over every detail of what had happened. The investigators asked about Callum's mental health, whether he had made specific threats and whether I believed he was armed.

I told them about the tool store and the maintenance equipment, but I could not remember seeing any actual weapons. The hardest part was explaining the woman in the red dress. How did you tell experienced investigators that you thought something supernatural had taken control of your colleague?

I stayed with the facts I could describe. Callum had seen her during our trip to the northern beach. His behaviour had changed immediately afterwards. He had become possessive and paranoid, isolating me from Rory and Megan and sabotaging every means of leaving the island or calling for help.

"Did you see this woman harm anyone?" one of the Police Scotland investigators asked.

"No. But I saw Callum standing behind the staff cabin, facing the trees as if he was talking to someone. He stayed there for about twenty minutes. When he came back to bed, he acted as though he hadn't been outside at all. After he saw her on the beach, he wasn't the same person."

They wrote it down but asked few questions about that part of my account. I could tell they assumed the woman was a guest, a trespasser or someone from a nearby boat who had somehow triggered a breakdown in Callum. I could not blame them. If I had been sitting on their side of the table, I would probably have thought the same.

The immediate response began before dawn, with the RNLI checking the island's jetty and shoreline. The full search started the following morning. HM Coastguard coordinated from the mainland while Police Scotland's marine unit approached Blackwater Island from another direction. A Coastguard helicopter circled overhead.

I waited at the station, drinking coffee and listening as updates came through. The first clear report arrived around noon.

"Retreat appears occupied. One male visible near the main lodge."

An hour later, they confirmed his identity.

"Subject identified as Callum Fraser. Claims to be alone on the island. Says the other members of staff left without notice two days ago."

"That's not true," I said. I had risen so quickly that my chair struck the wall. "Rory and Megan wouldn't just leave. Ask him where they went."

The Coastguard officer beside the radio relayed the question. Callum's response came back several minutes later.

"Fraser states that Rory Bennett and Megan Price took the retreat launch to the mainland and never returned. Says he has been waiting for collection."

"The launch is here," I said. "It's the one I used to escape. Callum sabotaged it. They couldn't have taken it."

The search teams spent the rest of the day combing the island. They examined every building, every path and every plausible hiding place. The helicopter searched the coves and surrounding water while the marine unit checked the shore.

They found no trace of Rory Bennett or Megan Price.

Their rooms had been stripped. There were no bags, clothes, toiletries or personal possessions. Their names were absent from the staff records, and the rota showed only Callum and me assigned to the changeover period. Photographs I remembered seeing on the retreat computer were gone. So were the messages we had exchanged through the staff account. Even Fiona's employment notes, examined later on the mainland, contained no reference to either of them.

I still had a playing card in my wallet, a battered joker on which Rory had drawn a tiny lighthouse during one of our evening games. I gave it to the investigators, but there were no fingerprints they could use and nothing on it that proved Rory had ever touched it. To them, it was only a card with an unidentified pen mark. To me, it was the sole physical trace that either of them had existed.

The investigators checked passenger lists and harbour records, but found no evidence that Rory or Megan had left Blackwater Island. Callum held to his story.

During questioning he appeared calm and rational. He expressed concern about my mental state and suggested that the isolation had affected my judgement. He denied sabotaging the launch, claimed he had never seen a woman in a red dress and insisted that Rory and Megan had simply chosen to leave early, although he could not explain how they had taken the same launch that I had brought to the mainland.

"He's lying," I told the investigators. "I worked with those people for weeks. I know they were there."

But without evidence, there was little Police Scotland could do. They questioned Callum for hours, searched his possessions and examined the entire retreat.

The only suspicious discovery was the missing communications equipment. The VHF set and satellite telephone were found in the locked tool store, which Callum could access with his maintenance keys. He claimed that he had moved them there for repairs. Both had been disconnected, but there was no way to prove why he had done it or that he had intended to imprison anyone.

The enquiries remained intensive for a fortnight. HM Coastguard and the Police Scotland marine unit searched the surrounding waters and nearby shores. Police Scotland specialist officers contacted other police forces and checked travel, employment and missing-person records. There was no need to involve the National Crime Agency because there was no evidence that Rory or Megan had crossed borders, been trafficked or become victims of organised crime.

No one matching their descriptions had been seen. No bodies were recovered from the Clyde or washed ashore.

It was as though they had simply vanished.

I stayed in a cheap guest house near Greenock while I gave statement after statement to Coastguard personnel and Police Scotland investigators. They all asked variations of the same questions, and I gave the same answers. Callum Fraser had been the only person found on Blackwater Island, and there was no verifiable evidence that Rory Bennett or Megan Price had ever worked there.

But I knew they had.

I remembered Megan's laugh whenever Callum told one of his dreadful jokes over dinner. I remembered Rory showing me how to fold a fitted sheet properly when we changed the beds in the guest lodges. I remembered working beside them, sharing meals and playing cards in the evenings.

Memories were not evidence, and eventually the investigation stalled.

Callum was released after questioning. The police had no grounds to arrest him and no provable offence with which to charge him. The investigators later told me that Blackwater Island Retreat had reopened under new management. After that, I deliberately stopped asking about the place.

I never saw Callum again. I never learnt what happened to him after he left the island.

I tried to move on. I found another building-site job in Glasgow, began saving money and dated a woman from the building firm for a few months. I visited my family in Lanarkshire and tried to act as though I was still the person they remembered. But I could not stop thinking about Rory and Megan.

What had happened to them? Had they suffered? Had they been frightened?

Sometimes I woke in the night thinking about the woman in the scarlet evening dress, her impossible smile and those far too numerous teeth.

I wondered whether she was still on Blackwater Island, waiting among the Scots pine, birch and wind-bent spruce for the next seasonal workers to arrive. Waiting for someone new to influence. Someone new to control.

I never returned to Blackwater Island. Once the investigators told me the retreat was reopening, I stopped looking for news of it and never searched for it online. Some things were better left alone, buried in the past where they could not reach me.

But I carried the weight of not knowing what had happened to my friends. Rory, with his easy laugh and his stories about growing up in Cornwall. Megan, with her relentless optimism and terrible taste in films. They deserved better than to disappear without a trace.

They deserved better than to be forgotten by everyone except me.

Police Scotland opened provisional missing-person cases based on my statements, but with no records, relatives or belongings to establish their identities, the files eventually became inactive. I was the only witness who could swear they had been on that island. The only person who remembered them being there at all.

In my darkest moments, I wondered whether I was losing my mind. Perhaps Callum had been telling the truth. Perhaps I had imagined everything.

Then I would remember Megan singing as she worked in the kitchen, or Rory's look of intense concentration as he taught me how to make neat corners with a flat sheet. I remembered the exact sound of their voices and the expressions on their faces. Those memories were too vivid and too detailed to feel like hallucinations.

I completed my recovery on the mainland, taking building jobs around Glasgow and trying to construct something resembling a normal life. But I was never quite the same person I had been before Blackwater Island. The experience had altered something fundamental in me. It left me forever glancing over my shoulder, forever wondering what might be hiding just beyond the edge of my sight.

The west coast of Scotland looked different afterwards. Every island seemed potentially dangerous. Every isolated shore appeared capable of concealing something that should not exist. I had learnt that there were things in the world which did not obey ordinary rules.

Things that could reach into people's lives and change them while leaving no evidence behind.

And I had learnt that sometimes, no matter how hard you tried to help, no matter how deeply you cared for someone, you could not save them from forces you did not understand.

All you could do was survive, remember them and carry their memory into whatever came next.