A moment later, Arthur’s old record player had been brought down and plugged in. Wally took the record from Ned and placed it on the turntable, gently putting the needle down on the vinyl. There was a wonderful ceremony to it, Penny decided, and a kind of alchemy seeing the needle move over the spinning vinyl that you just didn’t get with modern digital music. She’d gained a new appreciation for that over the last few weeks.

Again, as if by magic, the record crackled and spun to life. The bass guitar hummed heavily in the background, while the drums tapped out a slow beat.

As the song Anna played, Penny watched her father. He had gone from listening intently to the record, to suddenly investigating the inside of the sleeve. As he looked at whatever was inside the album cover, his expression changed, just for a moment, and a look of intense sadness crossed his face.

Oh no, was something wrong? Penny worried suddenly. Had something been damaged? Then, a different thought occurred to her. Maybe that wasn’t a look of sadness. Was it reflection? Had he been thinking of a memory? Had the song made him recall something else about Anna, something long-forgotten?

But then Ned mumbled the words, lyrics from Do You Want to Know a Secret, and her heart sped up once more. Was there one final secret to be discovered?

‘Can we play it again?’ Ned asked politely as the song ended. Arthur obliged and moved the needle back to the beginning, starting the song over.

‘Still sounds pretty good,’ he commented. ‘They really don’t make them like this any more, Ned. Such a shame.’

‘No they don’t, and yes it does,’ Ned replied simply, placing the record cover sleeve aside and giving his full attention to the music. ‘Anna didn’t know much about records when I first met her,’ he explained, ‘but she did her homework; she learned. For me, but I think she ended up enjoying it too. This was a great present.’

While her father’s attention was elsewhere, Penny moved to pick up the record cover that Ned had just set down. She was curious to know what had caught his attention just then. What had her father been looking at a moment before?

And when she peered inside the sleeve her heart immediately sank. Oh no, someone ruined this, she thought. They wrote all over the inside of the cover! One of Arthur’s customers maybe, or worse, could it maybe have been Wally as a child, scribbling on old stuff in the back of his father’s shop?