Storm at the Lighthouse

The morning after the storm, Tom and Emma sat at their uncle's kitchen table in Cornwall, wrapped in blankets and holding mugs of hot chocolate. Uncle Rob had not shouted at them, which was somehow worse. He had simply put two plates of toast in front of them and said, "Right. From the beginning. What happened?"

The twins were fifteen, and it was the first summer they had been allowed to stay with him on their own. For a week, they had been exploring the coast every afternoon, and almost every afternoon they had walked past the old lighthouse at the end of the beach. It stood on a small rocky island that you could reach on foot only at low tide, across a path of wet sand and seaweed. A rusty sign said: NO ENTRY. DANGEROUS TIDES.

"It was my idea," Emma admitted. "We'd been talking about it for days. Yesterday the tide was really low, and the door at the bottom was open. We just wanted to see the view from the top." Tom added quietly, "We saw the clouds. We thought we had loads of time."

That was their first mistake, they agreed. They had looked at the sky, but they had not looked at the tide table pinned to the fridge, the one Uncle Rob checked every single morning. By the time they had climbed the hundred and twelve steps to the top, the wind had started to rise. And while they were taking photos of the waves, the sea was quietly coming back in around the island.

Their second mistake was the phone. Tom had left his in his uncle's car, and Emma's battery was at four percent because she had been filming everything all afternoon. When they finally noticed that the path had disappeared under the water, she managed to send one message, WE'RE IN THE LIGHTHOUSE, before the screen went black.

"Then the rain started," Tom said. "Properly started." The storm hit the island so hard that the whole building seemed to shake. Water was coming in under the door at the bottom, so they climbed back up to the little room below the lamp and sat against the wall. Emma found an old wooden box full of fishing nets and they used them as blankets. They told each other stories to stay calm, and at some point Tom fell asleep, which Emma still could not believe.

Uncle Rob had been out looking for them since five o'clock. He had already called the coastguard when Emma's message arrived, but by then the sea was far too rough for a boat. So he did the only thing he could: he parked his car on the cliff opposite the island and left the headlights on all night, flashing them every half hour so that the twins would know someone was there.

"We saw them," Emma said, and her voice broke a little. "Every time. That's how we knew you hadn't given up."

As soon as the tide went out at dawn, the coastguard crossed the sand and brought them back, cold, hungry and very embarrassed. Nobody was hurt. The only casualty was Emma's phone, which had spent the night in a puddle.

Uncle Rob listened to the whole story without interrupting. When they had finished, he stood up, took the tide table off the fridge and gave each of them a copy. "Your grandfather used to make me learn this by heart every summer," he said. "I thought it was the most boring thing in the world. Then, when I was your age, I did exactly the same thing you did, at exactly the same lighthouse." The twins stared at him. "Who do you think left the lights on for me?"