Some days, Beverley accompanies George on his walks to the village and back, and they stop for lunch and a drink in the one pub that stands down there, sitting by the fireplace enjoying a hearty stew and talking about life, love, politics, history, culture and art until the sun goes down, at which point they head back to the cottage hand in hand. Two days earlier, on their walk home, they even stopped in the woods, throwing themselves upon each other to make love with a vigour they have not displayed in many years.

She hasn’t yet told her husband, but Beverley has decided that, upon her next trip to the village, she will go in search of paper and pens, for she has an idea for a semi-autobiographical novel that she’s interested in pursuing. She hasn’t written one herself since her very earliest efforts, but she feels a strong desire to pursue this book alone. They have no plans to leave Scoraig anytime soon and she quite likes the idea of sitting quietly every morning for a couple of hours and allowing the story to build before her, the characters to take shape, the world she might imagine out of nothingness. She will write about a family, she has decided, not a young woman in search of love from a wealthy, damaged man. A family with faults and flaws, who have gone wrong somewhere but are trying, are desperately trying, to connect with each other again. Their downfall, she knows, will be choosing publicity over privacy, followers over friends. She’ll take the events of her own family’s lives over many months and encapsulate them into five days. She might even soften them a little by including scenes that took place when the children were younger and she and George were more loving towards each other. She has a title for it already: The Echo Chamber. She doesn’t know whether her family will like being featured at the centre of the story or not, particularly as she has decided to portray them with all their eccentricities intact, but she can’t think about that for now. As her late colleague Kingsley Amis once said, if you can’t annoy somebody, there is little point in writing.

‘Look,’ she says, nudging her husband as she catches sight of their elder son, Nelson, making his way along the beach towards them, carrying something in his hands. ‘What’s he got there?’

‘I can’t tell,’ says George, following the direction of her eyes. They watch silently as he climbs the steps towards the cottage.

‘Oh Lord,’ says Beverley. ‘That’s not what I think it is, is it?’

‘I think it might be.’

‘Look what I found,’ says Nelson, smiling broadly. ‘It was all alone and seemed completely lost. How on earth would a tortoise find its way to the Scoraig peninsula?’

‘It’s probably been walking for decades,’ says George, taking a sip from his drink. ‘In search of other tortoises.’