‘You see, you understand. I am a poor wee soul.’

They set off across the quadrangle and turned left down a small, gravelled track.

‘This is the best cottage, I think, because you’re away on your own and you’ve got a fabulous view of the sea. And you’ve only got to share it with one other, although the mammy said she’d missed her ferry or something. She’s coming from Liverpool.’

Hannah grimaced. There was nothing worse than missing transport or being late. That would be her worst nightmare.

They picked their way down the path, Fergus hefting her huge wheeled suitcase over the ruts and pits of the track with ease.

With its golden-yellow painted walls, Marigold Cottage looked like a burst of sunshine, tucked as it was into the rolling green hillside.

‘Oh it’s so pretty.’

‘Mm, most people think so,’ said Fergus with a non-committal shrug, clearly a young man who didn’t do pretty.

Hannah definitely thought so. It had a tiny porch with white-painted wooden trim, windows on either side of the front door, both up and down, and a dark tiled roof with a gentle pitch. Honeysuckle trailed up one side of the porch bushing out over its roof in a cloud of green and yellow. Window boxes filled the downstairs sills with a profusion of the cottage’s namesake in autumn ochre, sunshine yellow and bright orange, their heads bobbing in the breeze in welcome, and below them in wide semi-circular beds the jewel-bright coloured flowers of tall black-eyed Susans, bronze and gold coreopsis and deep-orange crocosmia. Hannah’s heart lifted at the picturesque sight. This place was more than pretty; it was gorgeous and offered the perfect spot to enjoy the sea view from the little patio set just in front of one of the windows.

Fergus led the way and unlocked the little wooden door.

‘Home sweet home.’

Eagerly, Hannah glanced round. The hallway was a generous size with a neat wooden staircase climbing upwards and on either side were sage-green wooden doors. The first led into a good-sized kitchen-diner with solid oak units arranged at one end. At the other end by the window was a round pine table on which sat a large glass jam jar filled with wild flowers and two pretty table settings of a cereal bowl, floral napkin and chunky green glass tumbler.

On the other side of the hallway was a sitting room containing a large L-shaped sofa in pale-grey linen which Hannah could guarantee would be perfect for sinking into at the end of a long day; opposite was an open fireplace with a small grate, already laid with kindling ready to be lit. Thank goodness for that. She’d never lit an open fire in her life and despite her thorough reading of the Swallows and Amazons books, she wasn’t sure she actually knew how it was done.