Then something suddenly struck me, and my heart instantly lifted. That was the whole point, surely? Orla had always been drawn to the least capable … the most chaotic and unfocused and … and stuck and undecided … That was her genius. That was her message. We were all to be a part of it. We were all equally significant in Orla’s eyes.

It wasn’t ever just about the big draws – the main players – it was always about the bit parts. The character roles. Even the extras. The kitchen scraps, I mused. Ah yes, the kitchen scraps. Especially those.

And in Mrs Meadows’s case (to give her her fair due) these scraps were all culled from the highest quality of ingredients: the scented skin of an exotic mango … a feather-light sprinkling of salmon scales … a barely used lapsang souchong teabag …

I imagined Orla’s message as a tiny, newly hatched quail’s egg being transported across the globe by a galumphing horde of panhandle-fingered clowns. Its very fragility (the egg’s) and the chaotic nature of that journey (the blocked exits, the open trapdoors, the questionable escape-routes) were an essential part of what might eventually make it so powerful – so explosive. Yes. I needed to believe that. And by this same crazy logic, the sillier Mrs Meadows was, the more luminous Orla’s message might become under her careless tutelage.

‘Oh, I almost forgot,’ Mrs Meadows exclaimed, ‘Mr Huff wanted you to have this …’

She passed over a large envelope.

‘What is it?’

I took it from her, somewhat unnerved.

‘I don’t know. He just told me to bring it to you. He said I shouldn’t return to the cottage until you were standing right in front of me, holding it in your hands.’

‘The sheer arrogance of the man!’ I snorted.

‘Yes, wonderful, isn’t it?’ Mrs Meadows nodded (no perceptible sense of irony), then she squeezed my shoulder (a sympathetic squeeze, almost) and off she flitted.

I inspected the envelope. In small, neat lettering on the back, tightly squeezed into the bottom, far-right-hand corner (I imagine the placement of this message was of deep psychological significance), Mr Huff had printed ‘Please keep these, Miss Hahn,’ in pencil. The please underlined, for emphasis. I stared at his handwriting. My eye delighted (unhealthily) in its various idiosyncrasies.

I then clambered up on to the Look Out again, sat down with a sigh, rested the envelope across my lap, picked up Mrs Meadows’s slice of cake and gamely took a bite. I chewed and swallowed. The texture was perfectly light and airy, but the cake itself tasted of … I grimaced … of soap and walnuts … and … and (worst of all) innovation. Urgh! I tossed the remainder to the gulls who devoured it, squawking, then flew away (incognizant) like a little host of tiny guided, swede-and-nutmeg-laden missiles.

The envelope, when I opened it, was full of photographs. What else could it have been full of? Love?

But I couldn’t look at them. I didn’t … I wasn’t … I just … So I re-sealed it, leaned back on to my elbows, and sat quietly for an hour watching the sun sinking into the Channel (like a giant melting blob of raspberry sorbet), briefly relieved of all my burdens (aside from the gnats, obviously), feeling that special, empty brand of happiness only true melancholy brings.