Mags nodded and sniffed, wiping her eyes with her sleeve. ‘And that’s Mrs Fisher, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, I think so. She always wore that awful hat.’

‘Who’s that?’ She pointed at the fair-haired man with the little beard.

‘No idea – I’ve never seen him before,’ I said. ‘A friend of Pa’s? A relation we’ve never met?’

We looked at the picture together for a while.

Then Mags said what we were both thinking: ‘There’s no other family there.’

‘No.’

I looked at my young father’s eyes, and I realized that there had always been something sad in them, something haunted, even when he was smiling. He had carried some kind of secret grief around with him every single day – right up until the last time we said goodbye.

‘I found it in the cellar,’ I said. ‘Why do you think they put it down there?’

She shrugged. ‘Because it should be happy picture, but for some reason it feels like a sad one.’

‘Yes.’ That was what I thought too. I considered how people always thought of wedding days as such joyful occasions, and how romantic stories always ended with the couple getting married and living happily ever after . . .

‘Do you think you’ll ever get married, Mags?’

I was expecting some sort of jokey, scoffing response – perhaps even an ‘over my dead body’ – but instead, my sister shrugged silently and stared out towards the sea through the cave’s gloomy grey eyes.

Had I said something wrong? There was a wall between us again.

I got up and tidied away the buttery bits of paper from the sandwiches. When I turned around, I saw that my sister had curled up on her bed and closed her eyes. She must have been very tired. I pulled one of the blankets over her gently and went to sit at the front of the cave, peering out at the world that lay beyond.

I felt close to Pa here, looking out over the wind-glazed waves. He was part of the sea he loved. He was in the water and the wind. I imagined his voice telling us stories of shipwrecks and sea monsters, the legend of the Wyrm and the Stones . . .