As the hours passed, the years did too and as she read through her mother’s diaries Penny felt as if she was pulling back individual layers of an onion, peeling away at time.

She read the continuing journey of her parents’ courtship, experiencing Anna’s emotion and excitement come alive and spring off the page, and even found herself with tears in her eyes as she read through her mother’s interpretation of her father proposing – complete with getting down on one knee and expressing his love for her (with what else – a song lyric) on the strand.

And next Penny was reading about their wedding day and the way her dad’s voice caught and broke when he toasted his new wife at their reception right here at the hotel. Penny had known that her parents had frequented the hotel as local patrons before they bought it, but had somehow forgotten that they were married here. Ned and Anna’s first dance as a married couple was right here in the ballroom to Let it Be.

Her mother had also dedicated one entry at considerable length, to the wedding gift she had given to Ned – and how excited he had been when presented with it. Her dad, excited? That was a new one on Penny. Apparently, Anna had procured an autographed vinyl LP of a first edition Beatles record from 1964. She described it as a ‘VJ 45’ that contained the songs Anna and Ask Me Why. Apparently, the record was quite rare – and when Penny read the price that Anna had saved up, and eventually paid for the vinyl, very valuable, too.

‘It will go perfectly in his collection,’ Anna had reflected.

‘Weird,’ said Penny, reading the passage again. Collection . . . what collection? She wondered what it meant – a collection of Beatles memorabilia perhaps? But Ned didn’t have such a collection, certainly not here at the house and she couldn’t imagine something like that being stuffed away in the attic somewhere, as it would be something her father would be obsessive about, and she was sure she would have heard of it. He played music, yes, but mostly on the hotel CD player. There was certainly no turntable that she was aware of.

She pondered this for a moment and read on in the diary, but nothing else was detailed about the wedding present or the ‘collection’ – the next entry simply outlined a weekend trip to Dublin that Anna and Ned had taken for their honeymoon.

Wondering if she should ask her father about it, she quickly decided against it, as this would mean she’d have to reveal she was reading Anna’s diaries. She didn’t want to admit this; it seemed like something that was off-limits somehow.