‘Do we have to?’ Maude hitched her bag up on her shoulder.

‘It won’t take long,’ Nell said.

*

Maude looked at the door, which was locked, the office beyond it, dark. CLOSED. She made a point of reading the sign out loud, then smiling sweetly at Nell.

‘That’s odd.’ Nell tried the door, but it was bolted shut. ‘It’s a bit early for lunch. Everyone must be – I don’t know – out? Showing houses?’ Business hours were painted on the glass panel of the door: 10.00 a.m. until 5.00 p.m.

‘You’ll have to come back,’ said Maude, ‘another time.’ She smiled again. ‘Come on, I’m hungry.’

‘Can I borrow your phone?’

‘Starving, in fact.’

‘Please.’

Nell keyed in the number and left a brief message, asking someone to call back, and after checking the screen for notifications – out of habit now, more than anything else, she returned the phone to Maude who dropped it into her bag.

‘You’ll let me know when they ring?’

‘If I’m not actually dead of hunger by then.’

‘Fine. Come on.’

*

‘Was it nice,’ asked Maude, as they walked up the final few steps, following the path round to the kitchen door, ‘growing up by the sea?’

‘I suppose so,’ said Nell, ‘but it felt – I don’t know – a bit cut off ?’ She slid the key into the lock, glancing up at the drying ground. A midden, she thought, a rubbish dump; Carolyn was welcome to it.

‘Is that why we don’t come here much?’ Maude followed her into the kitchen.

‘Not exactly.’

‘Then why?’

‘It’s a long way, and we never seem to have enough time.’ Lots of reasons, Nell thought, none of them quite good enough. It was too hard, sometimes, walking through the same streets, where it seemed like nothing had changed, but of course, everything had. There were so many memories and even the happy ones were hard to bear. ‘It’s different now,’ said Nell, ‘I don’t have any family to visit, and all my friends moved away.’ She put their shopping on the counter, a loaf of wholemeal bread, some biscuits and a treat each. The cake Nell had chosen suddenly seemed less appealing, the familiar blue and white paper bag spotted with grease.

‘You have cousins, lots of cousins.’ Maude, until recently the only child of two only children, did not.

‘Yes. Well, we’re not close.’

Maude frowned, picking up the little envelope Nell had left on the counter. She pulled out the photos. ‘Which one’s your gran again?’

‘This one.’ Nell pointed her out. ‘You’ve seen her before.’

Maude nodded. ‘Do you remember Gina?’ she asked, ‘From before?’

‘Everyone knows everybody here, it’s that sort of town.’

‘But do you?’

‘No. Not really. She’s a bit older than me.’

‘What about her?’ Maude pointed at the other woman in the photo.