He let her go. Inside the cottage the living room was eerily untouched, despite the cold damp blasting down through the open roof upstairs. Anna barely noticed. She saw the go-bag she had packed and then left on the floor when Robert had turned up with the lifeboat. She snatched it up and unzipped it, dropping it again once she’d pulled out what she was looking for. The photograph of her family, together on the beach all those years ago. She stared down at the picture, her emotions in turmoil.

‘Now that we’re here,’ Robert said, at her shoulder, ‘You should bring whatever you need.’ He paused to glance at the staircase in the corner, bathed in a weird light from the ruined roof overhead. ‘If you can get to it without going upstairs.’

Anna picked up the bag. ‘I’ve got everything,’ she said. It wasn’t what was in the Fishergirl’s Luck that was important to her but the place itself, and she couldn’t take that with her. Bren’s bothy would stay put, the rain seeping in, in a way it never had when its original owner had been alive.

When they stepped back outside, they found that Terry and Susan had gone with Pat into the Weaver’s Nook.

‘You wait here,’ Robert said. ‘I’m going down to look at Dougie’s place and Pat and Frank’s rental. Don’t let her follow until I’ve checked it out, all right?’

Anna nodded. ‘Be careful.’

He smiled at her, though his eyes were sombre. Anna watched him pick his way past the wreck of Liam’s bench, over ridges of silt and what looked like crumbled stone.

As for the Weaver’s Nook, all the windows had been blown out, the rooms water-damaged and scattered with debris, ruined.

Anna found Pat in the private sitting room above the kitchen, the one that Pat and Frank had kept for themselves for whenever they had guests staying. The window had blown in, but the rocking chair Pat had used each evening still waited beside the fireplace and the old oak armchair that had been Frank’s remained on the other side. The two chairs faced each other as they had done ever since they were installed. Pat was staring at Frank’s chair, tears streaming down her face.

‘What am I going to do?’ Pat said. ‘What am I going to do without him?’

‘Oh, Pat,’ Anna said.

‘He hadn’t even started the crib,’ Pat sobbed, as Anna held her. ‘He was so determined to make it perfect for the baby, Anna. Look – there are his designs, still on the chair where he left them that last night.’