“Fishing trawlers mostly,” said Paul. “Yachts and the occasional houseboat.”

“No cruise ships, then?” asked Annie.

“Nope, no cruise ships. Although I’ve had a few commissions for suites on some of the big liners.”

“What made you give it up?” asked Annie.

“It gave me up,” said Paul. “Boat yards were closing down up and down the country; contracts became harder to find. And to be honest, I got tired of chasing them. When my dad got sick, I came back here to look after him. I never left.”

They were weaving leisurely in and out of the moss-covered gravestones in the oldest part of the churchyard of St. Andrew’s. The church was on the tour. Apparently, the vicar of St. Andrew’s in the late eighteenth century had not been averse to storing smuggled contraband in the crypt to be shared—for a reasonable price—among his Willow Bay flock.

“Do you keep your hand in with the carpentry?” Annie asked, running her fingers along the rough stone arch of a crumbling tombstone. She was enjoying herself; she felt grown-up and yet younger at the same time.

“Oh yeah,” said Paul. “I fitted out the Willow Bay Stores, and the bar and pews at the Bounty are mine. Every time someone wants a new kitchen, I get called in. Alfred lends a hand with the bigger jobs; he can turn his hand to anything.”

“What’s Alfred’s story?” Annie asked. “Maeve and Gemma seemed to think he didn’t want a home. That can’t be right, can it?” Annie had already decided not to mention that Alfred had slept in the tearoom; it would feel disrespectful to him and besides, it was no one else’s business.

“I’ve known Alfred for years and even I don’t know the exact details. I think Mari knows, but she’d never tell. All I know is he lost his family in a house fire when he was fourteen. He boomeranged around children’s homes until he was eighteen and spent a bit of time at Her Majesty’s pleasure, before finally giving up on society.”

“Oh my God, poor Alfred. I can’t even begin to imagine the mental scars that kind of tragedy would leave. Fourteen! It doesn’t bear thinking about.” Annie thought of the twins at age fourteen, still childlike in so many ways.

“I doubt there was much in the way of therapy or grief counseling in those days,” said Paul. “And I’m not sure being pinballed about the care system would have been much fun either.”

“No,” Annie agreed. “It goes some way to explaining his preference for self-reliance, I suppose.”

They were quiet for a time as they wandered among the final resting places of Willow Bay’s oldest residents.

“Now this,” said Paul, stopping beside a ship’s anchor laid in the center of the cemetery, “is the actual anchor from the actual sunken Willow . . . supposedly.”