The temporary nature of Nicole’s situation hit her again. Six months was all she had here and then the cottage would be sold.

‘So, what do you make of our little corner of the world, Nicole?’ Trevor asked, looking very pleased with himself that he got another question in.

‘It’s a beautiful spot,’ she said, forcing a smile. ‘And so peaceful.’

‘You haven’t met Charlie, then.’ Jack gulped down a large portion of pavlova.

‘Sorry?’

‘Charlie. The crazy old guy who lives in the boatshed.’

So Charlie was his name.

‘Now, now, Jack. He’s not crazy. Just a bit of a loner.’ Mandy shrugged.

‘Bit?’ Jack snorted. ‘He hasn’t spoken to anyone in what, a hundred years?’

Mandy shot her son a look and he quickly put another spoonful of pavlova into his mouth. ‘Just saying.’ He shrugged.

‘Charlie moved here some forty-odd years ago, so Mum says. Or is it fifty? No, fifty.’

Mandy’s grey eyes sparkled as she eased into her story. ‘Kept to himself right from the beginning, they say. We were scared of him as kids …’

‘’Cause he’s a crazy loner,’ Jack said, spluttering cream onto his plate.

Both Mandy and Trevor clipped him over the top of his head.

‘You know how kids can be. Case in point.’ Mandy’s steely glare silenced her son. ‘But Charlie’s never harmed anyone or anything. In fact quite the opposite …’

Mandy’s words drifted off and a sad, wistful look crossed her face momentarily. Nicole wondered what memory she was holding back.

Mandy cleared her throat. ‘He just stays out of the way, really.’ Her focus was now back to the present. ‘People have tried over the years to get to know him, but no one has ever managed.’

‘Not even my wife. Not for a want of trying, mind you.’ Trevor winked at Mandy, his eyes crinkling around the edges, his smile crooked.

‘True,’ she admitted. ‘Like everyone else I went out of my way as a kid to spy on him. No one knows much about him at all. Where he came from, why he stayed. One day he just appeared and was living in the boatshed and has been there ever since. Never had any visitors, far as anyone knows.’

A spark of latent curiosity ignited and Nicole found herself desperate to know more about the old man and find out what lay beneath his gruff exterior. Would he have to leave too once the cottage sold? Or were they separate properties, divvied up at some point in their history? She hung on Mandy’s every word.

‘Comes into town once every three months or so for food and basic supplies and every morning heads off along the northern face. No one knows where he goes or why. Every now and then some brave kids try to follow him.’ She looked pointedly at Jack. ‘But he always sees them and scares them off.’