“Kiosk,” said Mari when they reached it. “I don’t open it past September first, until Easter. If I reopen at all,” she said quietly. “But if you get some sunny days near the end of the month, which isn’t unheard of, and the beach looks busy, you’re welcome to open up. There’s a good coffee machine in there; only a year old, Italian. I have it regularly serviced, so it’s all in working order. You can use the coffee beans in the storeroom until you run out, and then it’s down to you to buy more.”

“The storeroom?” asked Annie.

Mari pointed behind her to a door under the stairs.

“Cellar,” said Mari. “If you want to keep anything down there, keep it off the ground. If the tide rises too high the cellar floods. It’s not flooded for the last few years; not since the council started building up the beach defenses each year, at any rate. But I don’t like to take it for granted. All this climate change makes me nervous. There’s a tunnel down there, leads to an outcrop near the cliffs,” she went on. “Used to be used by the smugglers, but we bricked it up and stacked it with sandbags to try and keep the flooding at bay.”

“Smugglers! Wow!” said Annie, ignoring the part about climate change and the inference that she might get swept away. “What a fantastic piece of history!”

“Aye, it was all blaggards and moonshiners round these parts,” said Mari. “There’s a big freezer down there with ice cream and cones on the shelf above.”

“Oh, I don’t think I’ll be opening the kiosk,” said Annie. “I’m not looking to start a business; I’m trying to leave one behind.”

“Suit yourself,” said Mari. And then she added, “There’s another chest freezer down there and a smaller one, both for personal use. Keep them topped up; if the winter turns bad and the hill gets cut off, you’ll be glad of them!”

They climbed the stairs, Mari leaning heavily on the handrail for support, her breathing labored not, Annie thought, by the climb so much as her knees, which Annie could see were causing her pain. Mari pushed open the door at the top of the stairs and ushered Annie into a bright little sitting room. A long chintz two-seater sofa sat opposite a high wing-backed armchair upholstered in a raspberry-and-cream tartan; a small coffee table piled high with books sat to the side of it. In one corner was a wood burner, with a black flue that ran up the wall and through the ceiling, and in the other a small flat-screen TV sat on a leather trunk. The walls were lined with shelves of books, stacked higgledy-piggledy where sheer volume made neat and tidy impossible, and stuck everywhere were small yellow Post-it notes with little scribbled messages.