“This isn’t a story, Violet,” I say gently, though I hate saying it. “There isn’t always a happy ending in real life. Maybe we just have to learn to accept that.”

“Even in a town where a two-hundred-year-old sailor can materialize out of a tap and a cat can talk?”

“Not even then,” I reply, relieved to see the fish and chips arrive.

“Anyway,” I say, after a long pause during which many chips are eaten (mostly by me). “I’m the real ninny here. To think that I had your dad’s manuscript in my Lost-and-Foundery all that time, in his luggage, and I never realized what I had!”

“You weren’t to know, Herbie.”

“Eels must have worked out where it would be,” I say. “And I bet it was old Mollusc who helped him get it.”

“Perhaps, but it was you who kept it safe till then.”

I pull a face. I still feel a complete dunderbrain.

“That’s your job, Herbie,” says Vi, with passion. “And you’re brilliant at it. Keeping lost things safe, detecting clues, finding rightful owners. You’re amazing, Herbie Lemon. And I’m so glad I met you.”

I chomp another chip and beam.

Well, I suppose I am quite amazing.

“But now, finally, I know what my job is,” Vi goes on, touching the angry scabs on her cheek. “I may not know how to find my parents, but I do know how to fix the mess I’ve made. I have to stop Sebastian Eels from getting the malamander’s egg. I have to face the monster myself.”

A wave chooses that moment to hit the pier, sending the salt and pepper shakers rattling across the table.

It’s some time later, and lunch is finished. We’re standing outside on the pier, keeping a little warmth from the diner snug inside our big coats as we look over the heaving sea.

The pier shudders again, creaking in the wind that billows and buffets around us. We’re standing right at the end of it, on the shrivelled wooden planks beyond the old theatre. The theatre only ever opens for a month or two in the summer, and, looking up at it now, I’m surprised it even does that. It seems like one well-aimed super wave would sweep it into the sea for ever.

“So you’re sure about this?” I ask Violet, pointing towards the rising sea. “You’re sure about that?”

Ahead, the dark, green-smeared iron hull of the battleship Leviathan is about to vanish beneath the surging waves. Only the two great chimneys – corroded almost to the point of collapse – and one gun turret are still visible as the tide climbs to claim them again.