Anne looked up from the keys, saw him, and smiled, but Lucy was staring at her fingers and did not notice he was there. She was eight, thin and brown, as quick-moving as a fish. It was an effort for her to sit at the piano, and she fidgeted on the stool and swung her legs. Duncan watched her with love, astounded again that he could have produced something so beautiful, glad that he was able to provide for Lucy and Philip a childhood so different from his own. Lucy had her pony, her pretty bedroom, her best friend to stay at weekends. Philip, three years younger, was already more confident than Duncan had ever been. Yet still he could not believe that it would last. He was convinced that in the end he would be left with nothing.

Anne often told him that his insecurity was caused by an inferiority complex, that he deserved his success, but he never believed her. Any of his achievements had been inspired by her. Even now he wondered how she had come to marry him. He had always been ugly, shortsighted, stooped. He still spoke with a heavy west-country accent, and her voice was so light and pretty.

He walked hesitantly into the room, kissed his wife, then stood beside her while Lucy continued to play.

“I’m sorry I have to go away,” he whispered over the child’s bent head. “Are you really sure you don’t mind?”

“Of course not.” She smiled. “ There’s plenty to do here. You need a break.”

He thought with bitter amusement how strange it was that she should consider that the week in Cornwall would be a pleasure for him. Perhaps she felt he would be more at ease there. He had been born only twenty miles from Rose Pengelly’s cottage, and she had a romantic notion that he needed to return occasionally to his roots.

Lucy finished the scale she was playing and looked at her mother in supplication.

“I must have had twenty minutes practise now,” she said. “Isn’t it time to go out to play?”

Her mother nodded, and Lucy was away, out through the French window towards the end of the orchard, where her brother was playing on a swing.

“Hey!” Anne shouted. “Aren’t you going to say goodbye to your father? He’ll be away this week.”

Lucy stopped in her tracks and came back into the room.

“Is it work?” she said.

“Sort of.”

She kissed him and disappeared again.

“I’ll miss you all,” he said suddenly. “ Perhaps I shouldn’t go.”

But Anne smiled at him with maternal indulgence and drove him past the neat gardens filled with flowers to the station.

As the evening grew darker and the pubs along the harbour wall became rowdy with holidaymakers and Friday-night drinkers, Louis Rosco prepared the Jessie Ellen for the next day’s charter.