The first time my husband and I visited Crovie was in 2017, during a spring tide so high and a wind so brisk that we dodged the waves all the way down the short line of houses, and failed to dodge them coming back. By the time we had returned to the point at which we had started, we were both soaked, and I was captivated. I have always been drawn to the idea of living somewhere that others would consider impractical, and in Crovie I seemed to have found that to a perfect degree.

By that point I had already encountered the meticulously converted mill pony shed that would become the Fishergirl’s Luck. The wonderful owner, Marie West, had invited me to tea and told me her stories of living in such a tiny place. The building is in another small fishing village on the same coast, but once I had visited Crovie, with beautiful Gardenstown visible across the bay from her narrow shore, I realized that putting the two together would give me the basis for the story that had taken root in my head.

Thus the Crovie in these pages is a version of the real place, but it is not an absolutely faithful rendering. The real Crovie is often busier than the one in my story. Homes are owned by people from all over Europe, and in summer families celebrate friendships renewed every time they and their children meet. They are all passionate about the village, fully aware that they are preserving a place that supported a way of life no longer in existence but still important to remember.

In September 2017, a severe landslide closed the single road into the village. It took a year for it to be rebuilt and reopened, during which time the only way in was on foot or by boat. This could have turned the village into a ghost town, but it didn’t, just as the huge destructive force of the Great Storm in 1953 didn’t stop families from thriving here. Choosing to own a home in Crovie requires tenacity, a willingness to take the weather as it comes, and to live amid the echoes left by centuries of people who did the same.

As I write this I am sitting in the kitchen of number 33, where I have spent the past few days polishing the manuscript of The House Beneath the Cliffs. It is 7 a.m., and through the window I can hear the engine of a fishing trawler crossing the bay beneath a sky that is lead grey after days of sun. I love it here, whatever the weather. I hope you did, too.

22 July 2020, Crovie.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Polly MacGregor, Angela Ritchie, Jess Woo and Amanda Lindsay for their continued encouragement, support and varying expertise, and for Marie West for showing me around her beautiful tiny home.