Read Chapter 7: The Budget Cut

The phone buzzed at 4:17 a.m., and Freya knew before she looked that it was not Morag. The postmistress had promised dawn, not darkness. She fumbled for the screen, squinting against its cold blue glare, and saw Rachel’s name. Her producer. In Edinburgh, Rachel would be at her desk already, the city still wrapped in streetlight grey while the island sat in its own private blackness.

Freya answered with her eyes still closed. “It’s the middle of the night.”

“It’s nine in the morning here, and you’ve sent me seven minutes of lighthouse lens and a man limping around a kitchen.” Rachel’s voice was clipped, the sound of fingers drumming on a keyboard. “Lovely atmosphere. Zero story.”

Freya sat up. The cottage walls were damp with cold, and outside the window the sea was invisible, only its voice present, low and hungry. “I’ve got more. I’ve got a doctor covering a keeper’s shift because there’s no one else. That’s the story, Rachel — the margins. How thin this place is stretched.”

“That’s a mood piece,” Rachel said. “I need an interview with the man who killed the lighthouse. The shipping company’s representative is arriving on the island in a week to do a final assessment. You get him on camera, you ask why they’re closing the light after a hundred and forty years, and you get his answer. Then we have a film.”

Freya pressed her palm against the cold glass of the window. “And if he doesn’t give me an answer?”

“Then you get a better question.” A pause, the tap of keys. “I’m pulling you Friday if you don’t have something I can cut. I need a confrontation, Freya. I need stakes. The islanders are losing something and someone has to answer for it. That’s the documentary you pitched. That’s the one I funded.”

“I pitched a portrait of a place in transition.”

“No,” Rachel said, softer now, which made it worse. “You pitched a portrait of a place being killed. Those are different films. One gets funded. The other wins festivals. You need to decide which one you’re making.”

The line went dead. Freya sat in the dark, the phone warm in her hand, and tried to breathe. The lighthouse beam swung past the window, a pulse of white that carved a momentary path through the black, and she watched it fade and return, fade and return, steady as a heartbeat. She thought of Donald’s hands on the brass, the way he’d polished the lens as if it were a living thing. She thought of Alistair’s jaw tightening when she’d asked about the trust. And she thought of the compass in her coat pocket, the inscription worn smooth by a child’s fingers.

She dressed without turning on the lamp, pulled on her boots, and went out into the dark.

---

The clinic was warm when she arrived, a low lamp burning in the corner of the waiting room. The boy, Callum, was asleep in the examination room, his breathing shallow but steady, a sheen of sweat on his forehead that had finally broken. Alistair sat in a chair beside him, head back against the wall, eyes closed. He did not open them when Freya entered, but his hand moved, almost unconsciously, to rest on the boy’s ankle through the blanket.

“You don’t sleep,” she said.

“I do. In short, unreliable intervals.”

She pulled the other chair closer, sat. “My producer is threatening to pull the project.”

Alistair opened his eyes. They were hollow with exhaustion, but sharp. “Because of the documentary, or because of you?”

“Because I haven’t got the footage she wants. There’s a shipping company representative coming in a week to do a final assessment of the station. She wants me to confront him on camera.”

Alistair’s mouth tightened. He looked at the boy, then back at her. “Malcolm Reid.”

“You know him?”

“Everyone here knows him. He’s the one who signs the letters. The one who closes the lighthouses and the post offices and the ferry routes, and never has to look anyone in the eye while he does it.” Alistair leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “He’ll come, he’ll walk the tower, he’ll nod at Donald, he’ll take some measurements and make some notes, and then he’ll leave on the afternoon ferry and the light will close anyway. That’s what he does.”

“Then give me something to ask him,” Freya said. “Something that will make him flinch.”

Alistair was quiet for a long moment. The lamp flickered, a draft from the window. “Iain used to say the island was one long list of things being taken away. Ferry service, school, the fishery. The clinic was meant to be the first thing they got back.” He looked at her, and for a moment the exhaustion fell away, replaced by something harder. “Reid’s company owns the shipping line that services these islands. They cut the winter run three years ago. My brother died waiting for an air ambulance that couldn’t land in the fog.”

Freya felt the words land in her chest like stones. “Alistair. I didn’t—“

“I’m not telling you this for sympathy, or for your film. I’m telling you because if you ask Reid about the light, he’ll give you a speech about cost and efficiency and the modernisation of maritime navigation. He’s practiced it. He’s given it a hundred times.” Alistair’s voice dropped. “But if you ask him about the winter run, and about the cut that left an island unreachable for three days, and about a man with a heart condition who waited for a helicopter that couldn’t fly—“

“He’ll flinch,” Freya finished.

Alistair nodded, then stood, crossing to check Callum’s pulse. The boy stirred, murmured, settled again. “The light goes on tonight,” Alistair said quietly, not looking at her. “You’re still scheduled for the tower.”

“I haven’t forgotten.”

“Good.” He turned, and something in his face had softened, though he was clearly fighting it. “You should eat before you go up. There’s bread and cheese in the kitchen. And Freya—“

She paused at the door.

“Whatever Rachel thinks you’re making, that’s not the story here. The story is that a doctor is running a clinic alone, a keeper is on crutches, and a filmmaker is the only one left to turn the light on. Ask Reid why that’s allowed to happen. That’s the question that flinches.”

---

The tower was colder than she remembered. Donald had hobbled up the spiral stairs with her, ignoring her protests, to show her the sequence one last time, his voice hoarse with worry. “Two hours on, one off, mind. Keep the lamp trimmed. Listen for the clockwork. If the fog comes in, the horn’s automatic, but check the pressure gauge every hour.”

“I’ve got it,” she’d said, and he’d gripped her arm with surprising force.

“It’s not about having it on paper,” he’d said. “It’s about feeling the light go out and knowing you’re the one who has to bring it back.”

Now she was alone, the great lens turning in its bath of mercury, the beam sweeping out over a sea she could hear but not see. She checked the clockwork, checked the pressure, checked the fuel. The wind had picked up, whistling through the glass panes of the lantern room, and beyond it she could hear the low growl of the approaching storm.

Her phone buzzed again. Rachel.

*Reconsidering. If you get Reid on camera AND something human, we can talk extension. Send me a rough cut of what you have by Thursday. Make me believe.*

Freya stared at the screen. Something human. She thought of Callum’s small body curled under the blanket, of Alistair’s hand resting on his ankle, of the way the whole island seemed held together by hands that were running out.

She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out the compass. The brass was warm from her body heat, the engraving catching the light from the lamp below. *Eilidh.* She turned it over in her fingers, feeling the weight of it. And she thought of the east cliff, of Morag’s rescheduled dawn, of the blank diary page with its single line.

She was still holding it when she heard footsteps on the stairs.

Morag emerged from the dark, wrapped in an oilskin coat, her face wet with sea spray. She stopped when she saw the compass in Freya’s hand, and something crossed her face — grief, or recognition, or both.

“You’re early,” Freya said.

“No,” Morag said, stepping into the lantern room. “You’re late. The dawn I promised isn’t tomorrow. It’s today. And there’s something you need to see before the storm swallows the light.”