Anna thought about Robert’s face as he’d left. She’d been annoyed by his interference, by the unspoken suggestion that she couldn’t look after herself. But he’d only been trying to help. Had she even accepted his apology? She couldn’t remember.

‘I’m not sure I’ve done a great job of that, either,’ she sighed. ‘Look, I’m going to go. I’m so tired. I need to sleep.’

‘That doesn’t sound like you,’ said her friend. ‘It’s still early. You’re not sickening for something, are you?’

‘Just want this day to be over as soon as possible, that’s all.’

Cathy hummed in sympathy. ‘Tomorrow will be better. Call me?’

On Sunday morning Anna woke before the sun had faded up the ocean waves from black to green and felt so nauseous that even sitting up was an effort. She cursed herself – it was a stress reaction she’d battled when she was first at catering college, and then every new job she had taken afterwards, and she had no intention of having to conquer it again. Anna forced herself to get up, made tea and then sat cross-legged in front of the window of her bedroom with the muslin drawn back and her duvet around her shoulders. She watched the improbable colours of dawn change as the light swelled over the horizon, hyper-real stripes of colour that looked more like the glaze on one of Rhona’s plates than the reality of a northern sky. To her right the cliff and the houses of Crovie looked one and the same in the early morning glare: part and parcel of each other, never to be separated, much like its people. We’re all related around here, us locals, in one way or another.

She left that thought where it was and went downstairs to shower.

Shortly after 9 a.m. there was a knock at the door. Anna assumed it was David and Glynn stopping by as usual with Bill and readied an excuse – the very thought of walking the clifftops was exhausting – but instead she opened the door to two small, familiar boys.