Anna had always liked storms. The first house she had lived in had an old lean-to conservatory on the back, and one of her earliest memories was of her dad waking her one night long after she’d been put to bed. There had been a storm rolling closer and he’d wanted Anna to see it. Her mum had been alive then, and when her dad had carried Anna downstairs she’d been in the kitchen, making them all hot chocolate. Her father had pulled the cushions from the old wicker sofa and arranged them on the floor, adding blankets to make a sort of nest so that the three of them could lie looking up at the storm crashing over their heads through the mottled glass of the conservatory roof. Even now Anna could still remember the rumbling bellow of the thunder as it drew closer, the blue-white crackle of the fork-lighting that had split the night sky above them, the taste of the thick hot chocolate, the murmur of her dad’s voice as he’d explained to her the science behind each strike, even though she’d been far too young, then, to really understand the words.

Anna paused in her scrubbing to watch the waves out of the window. Dad and Mum would have loved it here, she thought. In fact, I already know that they did, don’t I? They must have gone to so many places on that honeymoon trip, and not all of them would have ended up in that album. But Crovie did.

Was it grief that had prompted her to buy this place? Loneliness, a need to regain a connection to something fundamental and now lost to her forever? Anna supposed it must have had something to do with it. She cursed herself as an idiot again. As if a place could make up for how alone she felt in the world, take her back to a time she had felt connected, safe, wanted. How she wished she could talk to her dad about this place now.

Tell me what to do, Dad, she thought. I can’t live here, can I? I can’t. There’s nothing for me here. What was I thinking?

She went back to scrubbing so that she wouldn’t have to listen to the silence.

The oven and its tiled surround supplied its own surprise. Removing the dust revealed a splashback of beautiful dark green glaze that shone in the late morning light. Anna tried the extractor and found that, though slow to start up, it worked just fine, and that the hood itself only needed a polish to bring it back to gleaming health. Bleach did a reasonable job of returning the old Belfast sink to its former glory, although there were a few chips and cracks in the bottom that no amount of scrubbing would set right.