Robert lifted her fingers to his lips and kissed them. ‘I know we can. I know you can.’

‘It won’t be easy.’

‘Nope.’

Anna nodded, then turned to look out over the sea. The sun was beginning to set, edging the ragged clouds with vivid bursts of orange and pink. Out in the bay, Anna spotted movement. They moved closer, a series of sleek curves leaping out of the waves. Up, and up, and up again.

‘Well, would ye ken that, Anna Campbell?’ said Old Robbie, slipping his arm around her shoulders and pressing his lips to her hair. ‘The dolphins have come to wish us luck.’

Epilogue

Anna put down the phone and stared at the colourful proof pages spread across the desk. The cookbook was almost complete, and she had three more days to check everything one last time before letting Melissa know of any changes she wanted to make. Anna picked up the pencil she’d been using to make notes and drummed it briefly on the image of the gooseberries she had harvested and photographed in the kitchen on the day that the new worktops downstairs had been fitted. The sun had been out, pools of bright light pouring through the windows, shining on the space in which Anna now spent a lot of her time. There were still three months until she’d open her first service at the Crovie Inn, but Anna already knew the kitchen like the back of her hand.

She stilled her pencil, tried to read another sentence, failed, sighed, drummed the pencil again.

From behind her came a gurgle, and then a tiny but distinct giggle. Anna smiled and went to pick up her daughter from her nap. The baby was lying on her back in the crib that Robert had built from the designs Frank had left behind. Months he had spent on it, wanting it to be perfect, wanting to make sure it would hold the memory of the man that the baby who would sleep within it would never know.

‘Well now,’ Anna said, showering kisses on her daughter’s chubby, delicious neck as she scooped her up. ‘Look who’s awake already. Did you have a good sleep?’

Her answer was a headbump, aimed softly at Anna’s shoulder, as the happy baby pumped her arms and legs, excited by the sheer prospect of being awake and loved.

Anna left her proofs where they were – she couldn’t concentrate on them anyway, not now – and went out into the hallway. The faint sound of music from a radio filtered in from somewhere, along with the murmur of voices coming from one of the Inn’s almost-finished bedrooms.

‘Pat, Susan!’ Anna called. ‘I need a break – we’re popping along to the Fishergirl’s Luck. We won’t be long.’

‘All right, love!’ Pat called back.