‘Hello? Lorna Brearley speaking?’ she said, snatching it up. Sometimes, even now, she still half-expected to hear Aidan’s voice whenever she answered a phone. Is that you? It’s me, he’d always said; that easy shorthand you only got between people who loved one another. Back in the real world, however, the kitchen smelled of bleach and cleaning spray from when she’d done the rounds earlier, but there was a crumb on the table, she noticed in annoyance, dabbing it up with her finger and flicking it into the sink. She was only sixty-three and not planning to retire for at least a decade, but sometimes she worried that her eyesight was going. That she was losing her attention to detail.

‘Hi, my name’s Jonathan Woodward, I’m booked in to stay at Mawnan Cottage from today,’ a deep male voice said into her ear. There was something agitated about his tone, and Lorna braced herself for trouble. Here we go. He and his wife were going to be late, she guessed. They had deleted the email with her set of directions and didn’t know how to get there. They had changed their minds, wanted to rearrange or – worst of all – cancel.

‘Yes?’ she said guardedly. Well, it was too late for any cancelling or rearranging, she reminded herself. Not if they expected to receive any money back, anyway. Roy had made it very clear on the website that a month’s notice was required in order to cancel a booking, and that rearrangements would only be made at the discretion of the owners. ‘And no going soft on them either, mind,’ he’d warned her, raising his silvery eyebrows. ‘We’re meant to be a business here, not a charity, remember.’

‘There’s been a change of plan, I’m afraid,’ said the deep-voiced Jonathan Woodward now, as these thoughts spun in Lorna’s head like clean laundry in the tumble-drier. ‘Clara – my wife – went into labour six weeks early last night. And so—’

‘Oh my goodness,’ gulped Lorna. ‘Is she all right?’

‘She’s fine. Actually . . .’ His voice cracked on the words. ‘She’s more than fine. We’ve had a little boy.’

‘Oh!’ She clapped a hand to her chest, the soppy old fool that she was. You could hear the emotion in his voice, how choked up he was to be saying the words out loud. Their first baby, it must be, seeing as the cottage had only been booked for two. That precious first child. ‘Congratulations! Are they both all right?’

‘They’re doing really well. Obviously he’s very small still, being so premature, and it’s all a bit of a shock, becoming parents when we weren’t quite ready for it.’ He seemed to check himself, as if remembering that he was speaking to a stranger. He had probably been telling all his relatives the same thing the whole morning.