“Professional beachcomber, if you please,” says Mrs Fossil, giving Violet a snaggletooth grin. “The only one in town. And I hope to see you both in my little Flotsamporium in the near future. I have some curious beach finds just in. They would especially suit a young man looking for something for that special someone in his life. Eh, Herbie?”

Mrs Fossils nudges me, and winks at Violet.

“Really?” Violet looks embarrassed. “What kind of things do you find?”

“Ah, things like this,” says Mrs Fossil, waving her bucket at Violet. Inside, a dozen strange objects – shells, twists of metal, frosty glass pebbles and funny spirals – slosh around. Mrs Fossil reaches a fingerless glove into the bucket and pulls out a glistening brown lump.

“What’s that?” asks Violet. Not taking the lump, even though it looks like Mrs Fossil is offering it to her.

“Coprolite, my dear. A lovely specimen. Prehistoric.”

“Copro… What?”

“Doo-doo,” explains Mrs Fossil with another wink. “Dino turd. Petrified poo! One hundred and thirty-five million years old, give or take a day or two. I’m probably the first person to pick it up since the Lower Cretaceous. Imagine that!”

Violet, whose hand had been hesitantly reaching for the brown rock, looks like she can imagine that only too well and thrusts her hand firmly back inside her pocket.

“Or maybe you’d prefer some sunglasses,” Mrs Fossil continues, dipping back into the bucket and pulling out a pair of shades. They’ve obviously been in the sea a long time. At least, if the barnacles on the lenses are anything to go by. “Clean up a treat, these will.”

“Not just now, thanks, Mrs F,” I say, pulling Violet away. “But we’ll come round to your shop sometime soon, I promise.”

“Just you see that you do!” Mrs Fossil calls back as she strikes off across the beach again, back hunched, eyes fixed firmly on the ground.

Soon we are approaching the end of the pier that is out of the sea. As it looms over us, dripping from its seaweedy struts, I see the metal spiral staircase that I was looking for, rising up from the beach and connecting to an open hatchway in the wooden boards of the pier high above us.

“It’s not exactly a secret way,” I say to Violet, as I signal for her to go up first. “But hardly anyone uses it these days.”

I don’t tell her that another interesting feature of the staircase is that no one can see it from the town. Not even if they have such a thing as a cameraluna to spy with.

At the top, we emerge under a little ornate shelter encrusted with Victorian curlicues. From here we can see along the pier to the glow of warm light that spills from the windows of Seegol’s Diner.