As they drive down the hill and along the embankment, Sam continues his running commentary, and Cara exclaims in delight at the sight of the river with the castle guarding the entrance to the harbour, and another little town perched on the opposite hill. More memories come flooding back to her. She thinks about Philip, how he picked her up in London in his mother’s Hillman Imp and drove her down to this delightful town. How happy she was to be with him. He was so dear, so familiar. He organized everything and she was so excited. Back then he still seemed to be like Max: a kind, elder brother.

Now, she peers around, trying to remember where they stayed.

‘Aren’t we going to stop?’ she asks, disappointed, as they turn into roads that lead away from the river and out of the town.

‘Not today,’ Sam says. ‘But we’ll come back, I promise.’

She is amused by his single-mindedness, touched that she is to see this place that is so special to him. And then her breath is taken away by the scene ahead of them: the sea, vast, infinite, rolling as far as she can see and, inland at its nearest shores, coves and beaches curving away to a distant headland where she can just make out the tiny shape of a lighthouse.

‘Start Bay,’ says Sam with satisfaction.

In steep-sided meadows that plunge to the sea, sheep cling toe to toe with their long shadows, small villages perched high above them, and Cara leans from her window, gazing down at the half-hidden, rock-sheltered coves, at the tall pines and deep-clefted valleys.

‘Oh, this is amazing,’ she says. ‘However do you get to those beaches? Only by boat, I suppose?’

And even as she asks the question, Sam swings the car off the road on to a metalled track that runs between some tall shrubs, and into an almost deserted car park. He parks, switches off the engine and smiles at her.

‘Come and see,’ he says.

They sit at one of the wooden tables outside the Venus Café, waiting for their breakfasts to arrive. Sam watches Cara, delighted with her reaction to this very special place, happy to be sitting here in the warm early October sunshine. He looks around him, at the two cliffs that enclose the cove, the stretch of golden shingle, the tall pines that lend an almost Mediterranean feel to this enchanting beach. He tries to imagine seeing it through her eyes for the first time, watching the sea curling round the rocks, the little pools, the way the stream that runs down from the valley carves a runnel across the sands to the sea.

‘It’s perfect,’ Cara says. ‘And I can see now why you wanted to get here.’