Soon they are travelling out of the town, heading for Dartington and The Keep. Cara tries to get her bearings, gazing out at the countryside, questioning Sam about the little villages, and before too long they are climbing the hill and driving in beneath the arch of a gatehouse, into the courtyard of The Keep. Sam told her that it was built in the 1840s from the ruins of an old hill fort. Cara stares at it in delight: a central castellated tower three storeys high, two wings, set back a little and obviously added at a later date, high stone walls encircling the courtyard.

Sam jumps out and dashes in to announce their arrival, and almost at once Hal and Fliss come hurrying out. Max remains only long enough to say ‘hello’ before driving away again and, whilst Sam goes to get his car from the garages built into the gatehouse, Fliss and Hal take Cara into the house, through the great hall with a huge granite fireplace, along a slate-floored passage to the warm kitchen with its Aga. She looks around at the pretty patchwork curtains, and at the built-in dresser bearing delicate survivors – rose, blue, gold-leaf – from long-forgotten dinner and tea services. There are two windows set in the far wall and Cara is drawn towards them. Looking out, she gives a little gasp of delight. The hill slopes away so steeply that the kitchen seems poised high up in the air. She can see birds circling below her, and the great sweep of multicoloured fields and small rounded hills unfold, distance upon distance, into a misty blue infinity.

Hal and Fliss brew coffee and make her feel welcome, batting away her apologies, sympathizing with the problems of house-hunting, reassuring her that Sam will love showing her the South Hams. She suggests that they must be very proud of him, passing the AIB, and they agree that they are. They are an attractive couple. Hal, tall and grey-haired, wears an old Guernsey with his faded cords whilst Fliss, small, fine-featured, is dressed in jeans, a shirt, and a gilet.

‘Neither my children nor Hal’s went into the navy,’ Fliss says, as they sit around the long refectory table, ‘so it’s rather nice that Sam will be following the family tradition. And in Mole’s footsteps, too, of course.’

She looks at Cara enquiringly, wondering if she understands this, and Cara says cautiously that Max has told her something of Sam’s history.

‘With Mole,’ says Fliss, ‘it was a passion from childhood upwards. He wanted to be a submariner more than anything else in the world.’

Cara glances at Hal. ‘And was it a passion for you, too?’ she asks.