I’d already fired off my CV to several online magazines and tried a couple of the larger regional newspapers in the hope that there might be a vacancy imminent or that they would see my application and decide they desperately wanted to recruit me. Ha!

Every so often I would try to fight – deny, even – my festering panic. I had a mortgage on my little cottage to pay. I knew I was being blinkered, refusing to even consider a short-term job doing something else, but even that idea was beginning to falter. I might not be able afford to be choosy. Needs must.

I pulled my attention back to the present and the lasagne and parmesan in front of me. I plucked a chunk of garlic bread from the bowl and examined it. Beside me, Harley was crunching on her kibble.

I cleared up my dinner debris and called Harley to come to the front door, by waggling her pink sparkly lead. I felt like someone had tipped me upside down and given me a damn good shake. “Come on, you. Let’s go for a walk before I go crazy.”

Harley’s plume of a curly tail waggled with excitement as I closed the door behind us. I slipped on her harness and glanced around at my modest little garden, with its ceramic pots and flowered hedge.

I lived in an old cottage that was a stone’s throw from both my parents’ and the newspaper office. I’d bought it for a relative bargain, after securing the junior reporter role at the paper. It had belonged to a frail, elderly gentleman who hadn’t been able to maintain it.

When he passed away, his family, all located in the south of England, had been anxious for a quick sale and so I had been able to make them a competitive offer.

It had required a lot of work to knock it into shape and drag it into the twenty-first century. Thankfully, my dad being a semi-retired painter and decorator, meant that he and a few of his contacts had been able to turn it from a tired, jaded house with loud paisley carpets and Venetian blinds suspended from every window into a cosy, modern little home.

I think because I had been born by the sea, that was why I possessed such a love and affection for it. That was therefore reflected in my passion for all things blue, together with my love of rocks and shells. Moody lighthouse pictures adorned my hallway walls and there were sparkly rock and starfish ornaments scattered around my sitting room and bedroom.

I even had a cute little miniature lighthouse on the shelf in my bathroom from one of the local gift shops, which I hadn’t been able to resist.

Thanks to the myriad of blue, yellow, and vanilla painted walls through my home, Sea Shell Cottage had been transformed.