How would it feel being there? Not like going home, because the central Californian coast hadn’t been her home in two decades. Nor like being a tourist, because a tourist would freely explore the area. Walk into local stores, buy an ice cream without looking over her shoulder, offer cheerful greetings to the locals.

Joanna wouldn’t be doing any of that, even though her family had been part of Silver Point for more than three generations.

Otter’s Nest had originally belonged to her grandfather, Walter Rafferty. A moderately successful artist, Walter had inherited a small amount of money from a source that had never been confirmed. Rumor had it that he’d saved someone’s life, but Joanna’s father had said that given that the man never did anything for anyone, that was unlikely. Whatever the origin of the money, he’d bought a tired, weather-beaten beach house with stunning views over the deep blue Pacific Ocean. The place was shielded by forest, which had suited Walter, who was, by all accounts, an antisocial, moody individual. He’d chosen the place because it was just far enough out of town to deter casual visitors, because it had a spectacular garden with a proliferation of roses and fruit trees and he preferred plants to people, and because it had direct access to a stretch of beach that was otherwise inaccessible. He spent most of his time outdoors and had almost no interest in the house itself, which explained its gradual deterioration. Joanna’s father had once told her that Walter had married his wife, Joanna’s grandmother, not because he fell in love, but because he needed a woman to rescue Otter’s Nest before it crumbled into the ocean.

Her grandmother had set about scrubbing, cleaning, fixing and generally making the place more habitable, not because she was keen to obey her grumpy spouse, but because she refused to live somewhere that looked as if it might fall down at any moment.

As a child Joanna had been unaware of how valuable this parcel of land was. To her it was home, and the home wasn’t fancy. It had been left to her when her father died, a generous gesture that had extinguished any last hope she had of one day building a relationship with her stepmother.

Even after she’d left, she hadn’t had the option to sell the place because Denise was still living in it. Would she have sold it right away if that hadn’t been the case? Maybe. The house was layered with memories. The distant ones were good, but they’d been overshadowed by what came after. She’d ignored the problem, and then five years earlier her stepmother had announced that she’d had enough of living somewhere so far from town. She’d moved into a small house near Carmel-by-the-Sea, leaving Otter’s Nest uninhabited.