‘Of course.’ Chloe tapped quickly on the computer keyboard.

‘I don’t need any special treatment, Daniel,’ Reenie chided.

‘You may not need any,’ Daniel said, ‘but that doesn’t mean I can’t give you any. You need to stop fighting everything and let the people who love you look after you.’

For the first time, Reenie didn’t have a comeback. She gave Daniel a distinctly watery smile, then crouched to pat Spirit and Jasper, who had come padding out of Daniel’s office.

‘Who’s this?’ Reenie asked, as the scruffy white dog nosed his way towards her.

‘This is Spirit,’ Noah said, crouching next to her. ‘Hannah found him on the beach in the middle of the storm.’

‘Let me take those.’ Charlie held out her hands for the cake tins Hannah had carried in from the car.

‘That’s OK,’ Hannah said. ‘I’ll come with you.’

She left Reenie and Noah fussing over the dogs, and followed Daniel and Charlie down the plushly carpeted corridors to the kitchen. She’d already seen it on the tour, but that didn’t stop the wave of happy nostalgia as she stepped inside. The clank of metal against metal; the shouts, steam and sizzling; the familiar aromas of mouthwatering food – roasting meat and chips; the base notes of different sauces bubbling away; the glare of stainless steel. The Crystal Waters kitchen was smaller than that of the Whisky Cellar, but after the unease she’d felt watching Noah and Daniel rescuing Reenie, Hannah found it comforting being somewhere so familiar.

‘Put them over here,’ Daniel said, sliding his tower of cake tins onto a counter. ‘I’ll get them on plates and lay them out in the snug.’

‘This place is so nice,’ Hannah said, putting her tins down. ‘And it’s very state-of-the-art.’ She took in the heavy-duty ovens and hobs, the shimmering utensils, the short man in chef’s whites chopping carrots and courgettes with lightning speed. It wasn’t Levi, whom she’d met on her second day, but presumably one of the sous chefs.

Daniel gave her an amused look. ‘You’re into commercial kitchens? You didn’t say anything when I showed you around.’

‘I worked in a restaurant while I was at university. It was the maddest – and best – job that I’ve done.’ The words slipped out before she had a chance to modify them. ‘Best job until my current one, I mean.’

Daniel’s expression changed from amused to interested. ‘You were a chef?’

‘A sous chef. In a restaurant called the Whisky Cellar. It was all wooden beams, oak barrels and backlit shelves with bottles of rare single malts: a glowing amber haven in the middle of the city. And the chef, Cedric, was a weird genius – proudly Scottish, so everything we cooked had its roots in the Highlands or Glasgow or Aberdeen. Whisky creams and haggis balls, and tattie scones crafted into towers. I love that your menu is full of fresh fish.’

‘It would be criminal not to make the most of what’s here, and Levi is almost military in his quest to use fresh local produce. I leave him to it most of the time, though of course he runs everything past me. It’s a different world from all this,’ he added, gesturing towards Charlie’s mouthwatering morsels. ‘But both are of the highest quality.’