The entrance was exactly as Elle had envisioned it: liberated from its former pokiness, the hallway now opened right in front of the staircase, giving guests on the way to reception a peek at the old-style grandeur that awaited them. The reception area itself was fitted with a big oak desk, which Arthur and Wally Ryan had gifted them.

They couldn’t have asked for better weather: the July day dawned with high blue skies, light breezes and the smell of salt from the sea. The garden was awash with colour. Birds sung there all day and the stream running through it calmed all who walked through.

Except Elle. On the momentous evening when all her hard work was about to come to fruition, she was hit with an attack of nerves so bad that she was unable to confide in anyone about it.

It was too frightening to talk about, she thought. Her fears threatened to overwhelm her. She didn’t even acknowledge the feeling as ‘nerves’, she would have thought that was too weak a word. Instead she thought of it as a foreboding, a premonition of everything going wrong.

Why had she even considered taking on Anna’s role? Her mother was born to this kind of thing. She had an innate understanding of people, whereas when Elle looked back at her own track history with the community in general, she could have hung her head and cried.

First there was Rob – a thousand times over she had failed to tell him how she really felt, and a thousand times over she had caused hurtful misunderstandings. Then there was Doug Grant, and the people of the town who had found her manner cold and patronising. And her poor sister who had all her life believed herself to be inferior, and Elle hadn’t bothered to convince her otherwise.

Why did she think she could do this? With a sudden cold clarity, Elle realised that she couldn’t. Her job here was done. There was no way she could calmly greet guests tomorrow. She was more likely to scream in their faces. She had to go. For the sake of the hotel and everyone she loved, she should just leave.

She got into the car without thinking. Annoyingly, Kaiser and Gruff, Rob’s dogs, who followed her everywhere these days, got in too.

‘Well, if you’re coming with me,’ she said, ‘there’s no telling where we’ll end up.’ The dogs didn’t seem to be particularly bothered. Instead they put their faces through the open windows, tongues out, while the wind made grins of their mouths.

If Elle had been thinking clearly, or thinking at all, she might have recognised herself to be somewhat ridiculous at that moment. Here she was, running from something she had put more work into than anything in her life, with no spare clothes, very little money, and only half a tank of petrol.