I stride out and Mr Huff follows. We retrieve the bin in no time. When we return we find a woman in the garden accompanied by two large red setters, tending the little girl’s shrine.

Mr Huff is not best pleased by her sudden arrival. One could almost go so far as to say that he is infuriated by it, and doubly so when one of the dogs menaces him as he opens the gate.

‘Do you know this person?’ he asks, stopping by the gate as I position the bin in its regular place, scowling.

‘Uh … no. But there’s a little gang of them,’ I say. ‘Good, decent Catholic women in the main. Locals for the most part. They aren’t too much of a problem. It’s the other group – the Romanies – you’ll need to keep an eye out for. They come up here in their vans and block off the roadway. Infuriates the people in the Coastguards’ Cottages, it does. Causes no end of trouble.’

‘But this is trespass, surely?’ Mr Huff persists.

‘If you try and stop them you’ll only make them more determined.’ I grin.

‘Faith is like bindweed,’ Mr Huff snarls, ‘an unremarkable enough plant, but give it any kind of leeway and you’ll find it pushing its fragile green shoots through thick inches of brickwork.’

‘They have Carla’s blessing.’ I shrug, moving past him.

‘Yes. Miss Hahn said as much in her Welcome Pack,’ Mr Huff grumbles, following. At the mention of Carla’s name he seems profoundly demoralized. I glance back at him as we circumnavigate the allotment to avoid the dogs. He looks ragged. I notice the pinkness of his irises, the bags under his eyes.

‘No point railing against it,’ I console him (emboldened by the Welcome Pack comment). ‘It’s going to be a major part of the plot at some point, I suppose.’

‘Sorry?’ Mr Huff looks confused.

‘The plot. The story,’ I repeat, ‘you know …’ I blithely indicate towards the little shrine. ‘Orla Nor Cleary. The truth behind what really happened back then. The subject of your book – the book. Everything else – the parrot, the landslip, this – it’s all just incidental detail, surely? Just filler. I mean I can’t speak for you, obviously, but I know I’m totally insignificant – just a minor character, a handy plot device. That’s it.’

Still nothing from Mr Huff, but it’s almost as if he starts to … to fade.

‘I’m very tired,’ he says, flickering. Or is it me that’s flickering? It’s hard to tell.

‘Mrs Barrow mentioned a rabbit?’ I quickly change the subject.

‘Rabbit?’ He instantly jumps back into sharp relief.

‘Mrs Barrow said you were building it a hutch.’

‘Yes,’ he sighs, ‘I suppose I am.’

‘It might be worth popping down to see Shimmy, Carla’s dad,’ I suggest. ‘His wife – Else, Carla’s mother – used to keep rabbits when Carla was a kid. She bred some kind of German lop. Huge beasts, they were. They ate them. After the war …’