The woman watched as she made a point of pulling the gate shut before retracing her steps back onto the path. ‘They’ve let it, then,’ she said, looking up at Elder House.

Nell nodded. ‘We got here yesterday.’ She wiped her hands on her pyjamas, she was still a bit breathless, and felt more than a little foolish. It was a relief to be standing on solid ground.

‘Nice.’

‘Yes.’

‘Gina Verrill,’ the woman said, extending a hand. ‘That’s my place up there, Rowan Cottage.’

The hidden house, with its beautiful garden.

‘Nell. Nell Galilee.’ She tried not to wince as they shook hands, the nettle stings were starting to burn.

‘Galilee. That’s a local name.’

‘Yes, it is. I – I haven’t been back for a bit, but – yes.’

The woman looked at her appraisingly, taking in the pyjama bottoms and the faded T-shirt. ‘I used to know a Rebecca Galilee; she lived up on the Ropery, fifteen, twenty years back.’

Nell wasn’t really in the mood for this, she should have stayed quiet, or at least used Chris’s name.

‘My gran.’

‘So, you’d be . . . Linda’s daughter.’

‘That’s right.’

‘And your dad . . .’

‘Thomas.’

The woman smiled. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘Of course . . .’

Nell stepped back, folding her arms. She wished she’d bothered to get dressed before deciding to clamber around the bankside; behaving like an idiot visitor.

‘She was a lovely woman, your gran, always friendly, always interested in people.’

‘Yes. She was.’ Nell had long since grown used to the fact of her grandmother’s death, even if it still puzzled her occasionally, that she hadn’t lived to see Nell leave school, graduate, marry. At least her dad had met Chris, although he hadn’t approved.

‘Are you here for Dave and Jenny’s party, then?’

‘That’s right.’

‘It’ll be nice for you to catch up with everyone, I expect.’

‘It was very good of them to invite us, I haven’t really stayed in touch since – well – my dad . . .’

‘That’ll be Jenny, bless her. Dave’s a good lad, but he’s left her to sort most of it out. She got it into her head that she would invite everyone who was at the wedding in the first place.’

‘Right.’ A surname popped into her head out of nowhere, Marsay, Jennifer Marsay. She had a vague memory of the wedding reception, held in one of the villages up the valley. A couple of illicit pints of cider, a boy kissing her in a darkened car park as the disco lights bled out of the pub windows; everyone walking home through narrow country lanes because they couldn’t get any taxis. She could walk past David Galilee in the street now and not recognise him. ‘We thought we’d stay on for a bit, afterwards so we – you know . . .’ She gestured towards the house.