She didn’t want to think of all the things that she would regret if she died now. She didn’t want to think about her family, the Bay Hotel, or especially about Rob. Using her tried and trusted technique for blocking out all unnecessary emotion, and returning to equilibrium, Elle breathed and ignored her way through the rocky landing. If you had met her disembarking on the runway and asked about it, she would have shrugged and said: ‘It wasn’t too bad, really.’

Back in Clapham, she opened the door to her flat for the first time in almost two weeks. It was almost exactly as she had left it. There was a towel draped over the back of the couch, the coffee pot was sitting on the countertop, filled with the coffee she had neglected to drink before she left.

The only difference was that Sebastian had in the interim moved the last of his stuff out. He’d left nothing behind, not even a goodbye note. She hadn’t told him about her mother’s death so it wasn’t as if she’d expected tea and sympathy, but still. Though Elle guessed this said much about the quality of their relationship in the first place. If he could disappear from her life so easily, barely leaving a trace, and she could remain so unaffected by his absence, then clearly the whole thing wasn’t worth much in the first place.

She went and opened the curtains and looked down at the humming, heaving and glittering high street below.

Somehow in those two weeks, something had become painfully clear – she had lived in London for all these years, yet it still wasn’t truly ‘home’.

Back in Mulberry Bay, work began in earnest on clearing out the hotel.

A ‘For Sale’ sign had been erected out front by Paddy Corbett, the local overzealous real-estate agent, who had been hoping to get his hands on the property for years. He had investors ‘lining up to knock the place down and put apartments on it,’ he’d told Penny gleefully, wrongly assuming that the youngest Harte girl would be only too delighted to get the old place out of her hair.

Penny and Colin had watched him from the window and chuckled while he hammered it in: it was pointing straight at the sea. ‘Well, if any seagulls want to buy a hotel, they’re in luck,’ Colin pointed out. They had scoffed at the time to try and make Penny feel a bit better, but that was really the end of any light-heartedness.

Ned had once again withdrawn from everything and mostly stayed in his room playing music, or wandered through the garden. Penny spent her days reading Anna’s diaries and going through the rest of her mother’s belongings, as well as sorting out bits and pieces around the hotel.