‘Ah,’ said Pat. ‘Yes, I imagine it’s pretty dusty in there by now. It had been on the market so long and no one had really shown an interest in it. Old Robbie did say he was going to come and give it the once-over before you moved in, though.’

Anna smiled. ‘He said.’

Pat looked up from her breakfast. ‘Ah! You two have met now, then?’

‘No – I went out this morning and came back to find a welcome basket on my doorstep, with a note and my key. It was a very kind gesture. And honestly, I didn’t expect to walk into a show home,’ Anna said, although even as she said this, she wondered if that was what she’d expected, without even realizing it. Everywhere she had lived with Geoff in the last fifteen years had been minimalist to the point of feeling sterile, because neither of them were ever at home long enough to create clutter and anyway, that’s what Geoff liked. Perhaps she’d forgotten what an actual lived-in home felt like. ‘It’s not even about that, really. I don’t know what I was thinking, coming here like this in the first place. It was ridiculous.’

Frank turned to Pat. ‘Remember that first day we woke up here?’

Pat chuckled against the rim of the mug she held. ‘I was thinking exactly the same thing.’

‘We thought we’d made a terrible mistake too,’ Frank said to Anna. ‘It didn’t help that a bad storm blew in the night we arrived. It was as if we’d woken into the middle of the apocalypse. Pat cried, didn’t you, love?’

‘I did,’ Pat admitted. ‘I came downstairs to the kitchen – that was before we’d redone it and put the extra WC in – to put the kettle on, and there was a draught coming under that door that made it feel as if I was descending into the Arctic. The floor was wet, too, because rain had come in through the same gap. The rug smelled like wet dog, I couldn’t get the wood burner to light, and the electricity was off. I ended up sitting on the bottom step in damp slippers, sobbing my daft heart out. I thought then that we’d wasted all our savings on a mess of trouble.’

‘I didn’t feel much better, I’ll tell you that for nothing,’ Frank added. ‘No, it took us time to fall in love with this place, and with the village too. But we did. I bet you will too, Anna, if you give it a chance.’

Anna smiled again, but privately didn’t think she’d ever be able to fall in love with the dirty old shed that was currently all she had to call home.