Perhaps she saw the slightest twitch at the edge of Charlie’s mouth, but she couldn’t be sure. She took a big sip of hot chocolate as she watched the seagulls gliding on the breeze.

She stole brief glances to her right as she drank, noting in Charlie what would have been a quite imposing physical presence in his younger days. His large hands and broad shoulders suggested he’d been a strong man once. Beneath his wild beard Nicole could see a once-handsome face and she wondered how he could end up so totally alone in the world. How did anyone end up so totally alone in the world?

Charlie rose.

Nicole got up too, taking his lead that the morning was over.

‘Stay,’ he said and she sat back down.

He returned some minutes later carrying a tattered box with him in one hand and a small, portable table in the other, then sat down.

‘You play?’ He laid a brown Scrabble board on the tray table between them, its edges ragged and torn.

‘Sure.’

‘You any good?’ Charlie looked her directly in the eye.

‘I’m not bad,’ she answered honestly.

Her dad had been a huge fan of the game and they’d often played. She couldn’t imagine Charlie being anywhere near as good as her father, though.

She picked up her seven yellowed tiles with faded lettering. X, q, e, t, two s’s, and an a. She ran through the possibilities in her mind, discarding the shorter easier ones – axe, set, tea – looking for harder ones. Texas was there – what a shame proper nouns weren’t allowed. Qats was possible, but she wasn’t sure Charlie would be familiar with the Arabian plant and she didn’t want to get in a fight. She decided to let him lead the way instead of starting the traditional way of drawing tiles.

‘Age before beauty,’ she suggested.

‘I’m definitely the former, but you?’ He looked her up and down.

Was that a quip? Well, that was something. ‘Right then.’ Nicole flexed her fingers. ‘Gloves are officially off.’ She grinned.

A few minutes in it became obvious to Nicole that she should not have underestimated Charlie. She wished she’d used qats when she’d had the chance.

‘L, e, a, r, n,’ Nicole spelled out her fifth word. ‘Five points, double word score. Did you know that up until the nineteenth century it was perfectly acceptable to say ‘he learned me how to read’?’ She added her points to her score.

‘Hogwash.’ Charlie stared at his tiles. ‘True story.’

He ignored her.

‘j, o, v, i, a, l,’ Charlie placed his tiles on the board. ‘Sixteen points, triple on the j, thirty-two.’

‘You would be jovial about that.’ Nicole shook her head as she added up his running total.

‘From the Latin jovialis, of Jupiter, the planet said to exert a happy influence.’

Nicole stared at Charlie.

‘Problem?’