It felt strange to be following people I couldn’t see, but I had faith that Rob, walking behind me, saw clearly enough for the both of us, so when he said Colonel Graeme and Anna were just up ahead I believed him. They were, from the angle at which he was watching them, slightly more inland and not quite so close to the cliff’s edge as we were, but they were three hundred years in the past where no fenced fields impeded them, blocking their access and forcing them onto the coast path. I saw them as Rob was describing them: Anna on restlessly dancing feet leading the weathered old soldier along. Rob said, ‘He’s not a tall man. He’s not all that old, either, not by our standards. He’d be in his sixties, I’d guess. And he’s not walking now like an old man at all, but like someone who’s spent his life marching – his back’s straight, his head’s up except when he bends it to listen to her. He’s got grey hair, combed back and tied here,’ Rob said, putting one hand at the nape of his neck, ‘into one of those, what d’ye call them?
