His ship’s name, too, the Royal William—I had made that up as well, but I knew that would be a simple thing to fix. The British navy kept good records, it would all be written down somewhere.

Jane said, ‘You’ll have to change the name of his “young colleague” while you’re at it. Captain Hamilton. You’ve got a Duke of Hamilton already, you can’t have another Hamilton. Your readers will be too confused.’

‘Oh. I didn’t even notice that.’ It was a bad habit of mine, playing favorites with names. In one of my first books I’d nearly had two men named Jack running round, mixing everyone up. Jane had caught that one, too, at the very last moment. ‘Thanks,’ I told her now, and started looking for my workbook, to remind myself.

My workbook was the only way that I could keep things organized. Before, I’d carried pocketfuls of notes and scribbled scraps of paper. Now, I wrote down all my thoughts on characters and plotting in the pages of a weathered three-ring binder, where I also kept the photocopied pages from the books I’d used for research, and the maps and timelines that I would refer to as my story took its shape. I’d got the inspiration for my workbook from my father’s family history binders, neatly kept and sectioned in a way that satisfied his sense of order. He had worked his whole life as an engineer, in charge of building things, and second only to his love of making every surface level, was his need to battle chaos with pure logic.

I did try. I flipped my workbook to the section labeled ‘To Be Checked’ and jotted down the names of Captain Gordon and his ship and Captain Hamilton.

‘So you think it’s all right?’ I asked.

‘I love it. It’s fantastic. But you don’t need me to tell you that,’ Jane said, and smiled at me, a parent indulging a child. ‘You writers and your insecurities. Honestly. You said yourself you felt you were creating something wonderful.’

‘I said the feeling of writing it was wonderful. That doesn’t mean the story’s any good.’

‘Come on. You know it is.’

‘OK,’ I said. ‘I think that it’s fantastic, too. But it’s still nice to hear it from somebody else.’

‘Insecurities,’ she said again.

‘I can’t help it.’ It came with the job—all the time that I spent on my own, with that blank stack of paper I had to turn into a book. Sometimes I felt like the girl in the fairy tale, Rumplestiltskin, locked up and told to spin straw into gold. ‘I’m never sure,’ I said, ‘if I can pull it off.’

‘But you always do,’ Jane pointed out. ‘And brilliantly.’

‘Well, thank you.’

‘All you need is a break. I could take you to lunch.’

‘That’s all right, we don’t have to go out. I can make you a sandwich.’

She looked round. ‘With what?’

I hadn’t realized, till I looked around myself, that I had nearly used up the supplies that Jimmy Keith had stocked my kitchen with. I was down to three slices of bread and an egg. ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I guess I need to do some shopping.’

‘We can do that,’ said Jane, ‘on our way back from lunch.’

After lunch, though, I managed to talk her into walking up to Slains with me, again. We went from the village this time, by the footpath that led from the Main Street. It took us through a wood of tangled trees behind Ward Hill, where a small and quiet stream ran through a gully to the sea. The footpath crossed the stream by way of a flat bridge, then climbed the further hill that changed from coarse, shrub-covered ground into a proper cliff as we came up above the level of the trees. Another steep turn and we stood at the top, with the sea far below us and Slains in our sights. The walk here wasn’t difficult, as coast paths went, but it was slippery in spots, and twice Jane nearly lost her footing near the edge.

‘You are not,’ she said, emphatically, ‘to come up here alone.’

‘You sound exactly like my mother.’

‘She’s a sensible woman, your mother. I mean, look at this, will you? What kind of a madman builds his home right at the edge of a cliff ?’

‘The kind of a madman who likes good defenses.’

‘But they’re not such good defenses, really, are they? If your enemies came overland, they’d have you trapped. There’d be nowhere to go.’ She glanced down again at the foaming sea striking the rocks far below, and I could see that it affected her. I hadn’t expected that she would be bothered by heights. After all, she’d flown with Alan, and the two of them were known to do some crazy things on holidays, like climbing into caves and parasailing in the Amazon.

‘Are you OK?’ I asked.

‘I’m fine.’ But she did not look down again.

I felt completely in my element, myself. I liked the sea sounds and the crisp wind in my face, and my feet placed themselves with confidence upon the path, as though they felt quite certain of the way.

There were no other footprints ahead of our own, and no tracks of a dog in the soft, muddy places. Which wasn’t too surprising, since it stood to reason that the man I’d run into that first day in the parking lot, the man I’d asked directions of, could hardly spend his whole day, every day, up here. He might not even be a local man. I hadn’t seen him round the town—and, for no reason other than the fact I’d liked his smile, I had been looking.

I was looking for him now, but when he wasn’t at the top, I took care not to show my disappointment. Jane didn’t miss much, and she always had been quick to take an interest any time I took an interest in a man. I didn’t want her asking questions. After all, there wasn’t anything for me to say, I’d only met him once. I didn’t even know his name.