Anna took in the houses as she passed, surprised to realize that in a few places where the rise of the cliff was less precipitous, concrete steps staggered up between dwellings to reach additional homes built close behind. There were gardens, too, spaces where the grasses had been left to grow, creating soft slopes where the wildflowers prospered – the blue heads of harebells; the hardy white of daisies; the purple of vetch and thistle; a cheery little yellow flower for which Anna had no name. The houses altered as the far end of the village narrowed towards the encroaching cliff. Here they were smaller, mostly single-storey dwellings, or with additional windows built into the attic space. Their open faces turned towards the unforgiving ocean instead of towards each other. They were still bigger than the Fishergirl’s Luck, but not by much, and Anna tried to imagine what they must have been like inside when they were first built. Poky, cramped, cold, damp. It is amazing what people get used to, she thought. Amazing what people can survive.

No one seemed to live in any of these properties now, or at least not full-time. Most of them had signs or posters in the window, advertising them as holiday cottages to curious tourists who, like her, had wandered far enough to see them. The cliff reared up behind them, pressing in like an unsavoury stranger in a crowd. There was something else, too – an absence she could not put her finger on until she looked up and realized there were no gulls wheeling about overhead. Even the seabirds were staying away.

She caught the faint smell of dank decay. Looking up at the cliff again, Anna saw that here it was smeared with scars, old marks where the grass and earth overlying the sheer rock had shifted and slipped. Some of the houses below had obviously been affected. One had the unnaturally dark windows peculiar to abandoned dwellings. Another had curtains at its cobwebbed windows, and a blue tarpaulin was secured over its rear wall, its edges fluttering slightly in the dawn breeze. A piece of rusted guttering hung loose beneath it, torn away from its original position.