She opens the airmail bag, already knowing that it’ll be from Mette. Inside is a little cardboard box with embossed letters on it. Inside is a gold necklace with a heavy grey pearl on it. Helga lifts it out.

I know you don’t usually like jewellery, but I saw this and thought of you.

Mette always remembers her birthday, Helga thinks, even though Helga herself never celebrates it. She never tells anyone, and she weighs the heavy pearl, sensing her obligation to her niece.

She puts it back in the box. It’ll go in the drawer with all the other gifts Mette has sent over the years. She thinks of her niece in an expensive jewellery shop, or in one of those posh places in the airport duty-free, pointing to the necklace and opening her leather wallet full of credit cards.

Mette had never been decisive as a small child. Helga couldn’t stand her saying that she ‘didn’t mind’ to every question she asked her about what she wanted to do, or what she wanted to eat.

‘You should mind,’ Helga had told her. ‘You should mind very much about your choices. You mustn’t leave it up to anyone else. Decide what you want. For you.’

How easy it had been to give such worthy life advice back then. She thought life would get easier as she got older. She assumed her choices and what she wants would always be in sync. But they’re not.

The promise of the earlier dawn materialises into a sparkling day. When Helga gets to the beach, the sea is blue and clear and cold, the sea peaking in a million dazzling crests. The sky is striped in a lazy wash of greeny-blue.

Helga yawns as she stretches towards the horizon where there’s a soft, pink haze. A flock of black and white terns swoop and duck. The breeze is the warmest it has been for months and Helga turns her face into the sun and closes her eyes.

‘Oh, she’s not coming,’ Claire says from beside her, looking at her phone. They’ve been waiting for Tor, but now it’s time to get moving. Helga yawns again.

‘OK, let’s go,’ she says.

‘Stay there,’ Claire tells Luna. The little dog is sitting on Dominica’s coat.

‘You seem tired?’ Claire says.

‘I was up at dawn. The nightingale is back in my yard,’ Helga explains.

‘A nightingale? Aren’t they rare?’

Helga nods and tells Claire to look up the BBC recording of a cellist playing the ‘Londonderry Air’ with the nightingale singing along.

Dominica and Maddy have gone ahead and are already fully submerged. Dominica waves as Claire and Helga arrive at the water’s edge.

‘Get in. It’s wonderful,’ she calls.

The water is cold, but not as cold as it has been and it’s calm and clear as they swim out.

‘Helga’s got a nightingale in her garden,’ Claire tells the others, who are all impressed too.

‘I like the sound of your place,’ Maddy says.