Inside, the embers of a fire glow in the grate. I think to myself that it’s odd of Jenny to go out and leave a fire burning unattended in a bookshop. Was she called out urgently? Or am I trying too hard to play the detective?

“You closed early?” I say as Jenny throws logs on the fire.

“Sea mist days are never busy,” she replies. “And besides, I had to visit the doctor.”

“Dr Thalassi?” says Violet, limping into one of the fireside armchairs.

“Yes,” says Jenny, removing her coat and scarf and looking at Vi. “And maybe you should see him too. How did you hurt your leg, Violet?”

“I-I just twisted it.”

Jenny pulls over a low stool and lifts Vi’s leg onto it. “Let me get you a hot drink, and then I’ll take a look. A tight bandage should help you move more easily.” She walks to the door but then turns back at Violet. “I was wondering when I’d see you again.”

“Does she seem a bit funny to you?” I whisper to Vi after Jenny has gone. “A bit … shifty?”

“She said she went to see Dr Thalassi,” Vi whispers back. “But she doesn’t seem unwell to me.”

I shrug. You can’t always tell if someone’s ill just by looking at them.

When Jenny comes back, she has a plate of biscuits and three mugs of hot chocolate. She sets the tray on a low table between us and asks Violet to take off her boot. It’s not until she’s wrapping Vi’s ankle in a soft white bandage that she speaks again.

“So, Violet Parma, did you read the book the mermonkey chose for you?”

I glance over to the mermonkey, sitting hunched and hairy in the shadows, its back turned to us. In the flickering light of the fire, with nothing but dusk and freezing mist in the window beyond, it almost seems to be moving.

Violet fishes the book out from her coat pocket and props it open near the fire. “It, er, got a bit wet today,” she says. “But I’ve started reading it, yes.”

“And?”

“And I’d like you to tell me,” says Vi, “how well you really knew my dad.”

Jenny doesn’t answer as she finishes the bandage. Then she sits back with a sigh.

“I wanted to say something yesterday. But when I saw which book you’d been given, I thought I might be interfering.”

“Interfering?” Vi blinks. “That’s a funny thing to say. Interfering with what?”

“It’s the same book your parents were dispensed, Violet,” Jenny says. “That last night before they disappeared.”

Violet picks up the book again and stares at it, open-mouthed.