She had paid the asking price on the understanding that she could keep the furniture and fixtures, because she had none of her own and the impracticalities of Crovie’s geography made buying anything new a challenge. The solicitor had warned her that the Fishergirl’s Luck would need ‘updating’, but at the time Anna had thought it was the best way to deal with the situation. Now, though, she saw that it meant she’d been left with a load of old junk. The main room – the living area – spread out to her left. Beneath the window that looked out onto the path was a saggy two-seat sofa in coarse blue fabric, stuffing pluming from the ends of its worn arms, and in front of that was a pine coffee table, grubby with dust. Two lumpy-looking armchairs stood the other side, upholstered in orange and brown fabric that looked as if it might have been fashionable in the 1970s. All this was arranged side-on to a hearth built into the far left wall, which housed a tiny wood burner. The staircase Anna remembered so vividly from the photographs was stuck in the far corner, next to the hearth and disappearing up to the second floor against the wall that backed on to the ocean. As Anna regarded it now, it seemed a lot less like a cute and quirky architectural feature and a lot more like a death trap. Under her feet was a threadbare blue carpet that didn’t quite match the colour of the sofa, even though it seemed about the same age.

Directly in front of her, beginning under the low reach of the stairs and finishing at the cottage’s right external wall, was the kitchen. Anna had checked the listing, and knew that the Fishergirl’s Luck had an oven, a sink and a fridge, all arranged on a tiled oblong of floor. At the time, that was all she had cared about – when she’d walked out of Geoff’s life she wasn’t sure she’d ever want to go back into a kitchen at all, at least not beyond making herself toast or the occasional microwave meal. Now though, she was taken by surprise at her sense of dismay as she contemplated the space. Sure, there were shelves and cupboards. There were worktops, and even a ‘dining table’, if that was the right term for a little pine bench built to fit under the slope of the stairs with two stools pushed beneath it. But the whole was so very tiny that it would have slotted into the lift back at Geoff’s place, and as she looked at it now Anna couldn’t imagine even wanting to make toast here, let alone anything else.