After a still moment, Yvonne kissed the cheeks of each of her sons and gave her arm to help her aunt to depart.

‘Oh, dear,’ Clancy said unhappily when the two women had made their way out to the lane, soon followed by the sound of a car starting up. ‘Sorry.’

‘Don’t be.’ Aaron wiped away a frown and looped an arm about her waist. ‘Have a beer with Lee and me.’

‘OK.’ Clancy tried to hide her dismay because Aaron was clearly uncomfortable at the chilliness of his family. She felt unwelcome everywhere at the moment.

Lee wasn’t chatty. When Aaron came out with a fresh supply of Becks he drained the can in his hand and took two more. They were large cans too.

While Lee stared out to sea like a sad grey cloud, Aaron told Clancy about the garden he was working on, one that had been beautiful once, full of winding paths and native flowers. The new owners wanted the whole lot ripped up and laid to lawn with a massive blue gazebo in the middle. He’d told them he couldn’t lay turf in the present dry spell unless they were prepared to water it well every day and they’d said, ‘Can’t you pop by and do it?’

Clancy sipped her beer. ‘I heard on the radio that we have rain coming soon.’ They were seriously talking about the weather? Where was the easy way they’d developed between them over the past three months?

‘How do you feel about me hooking up to your internet to research broadband and crowdfunding?’ she asked brightly, taking out her phone. At least if she brought up her supposed reason for being here they’d have something real to talk about.

‘Sounds a great idea. It might be easier if we use my laptop.’ Aaron got up and went indoors, glancing at Lee as he passed. Lee continued to watch the last of the sun sinking below the horizon.

When Aaron returned, he and Clancy sat together on the bench over the laptop screen. It didn’t take them long to discover that Nelson’s Bar’s copper telephone lines were ancient, the village was a long way from the exchange, they had none of the vital modern ‘cabinets’ – those green boxes you scarcely noticed in urban streets – and the village, on its headland sticking out to sea, was not within mobile signal mast range.

‘No surprises there,’ Clancy observed. ‘Let’s look for crowdfunding information for the B&B.’ Clancy tapped rapidly at the laptop keyboard, feeling better now that Aaron’s knee was rubbing against hers and his right hand had settled cosily on her thigh. It was like a private hug.

‘I’ll bet crowdfunding will be a hard sell to Kaz and Oli,’ Aaron observed. ‘They seem to be pretty conservative to me.’ His thumb was drawing slow circles on her thigh and Clancy was beginning to find it distracting. Especially when his hand drifted slightly higher. Even in the last of the light, she could see by the expression in his eyes that he was absolutely aware of where his hand was. To the millimetre.