He opened the box of salt as Anna pulled out her gloves. They were gardening gloves that Geoff had given her years ago, despite the fact that she’d never actually had a garden of her own. At the time she’d had the feeling that it was some kind of barbed statement concealed as a joke at her expense. She was glad now that she hadn’t thrown them out.

Robert looked at her with amusement as she put them on. ‘Don’t tell me the hardened chef is a wee bit squeamish?’

Anna grinned, pushing her hair back behind her ears to stop it dancing wildly in the wind. ‘I want to be prepared, that’s all. I’ve never done this before.’

He nodded, then crouched over one of the air holes. ‘I’ll let you into a secret,’ he said. ‘Neither have I.’

Anna laughed, astonished. ‘What? But—’

He looked up at her with a quick grin. ‘Theory, not reality, right? Anyway, what is it the kids say? Fake it ’til you make it?’ He jutted his chin at the sand. ‘Ready?’

She gave him a thumbs up and he tipped some salt into the hole. They watched in silence for a few seconds as it dissolved. Then came the reaction: a sudden bubbling of water being expelled before a tower of shell erupted as the creature tried to clear its airway.

‘Quick,’ Robert exclaimed, leaning back to give her space, ‘grab it!’

Anna wrapped her fingers around the shell and pulled. The clam resisted, but she dragged it from the sand and held up the fat shellfish, watching the foot search for purchase and finding none.

‘It worked,’ Robert said with surprise, and then laughed, the most heartfelt she’d yet heard him give: a good sound, alive and free. ‘Well, would ye ken that?’

Anna dropped the clam into the bucket, laughing too, although as she watched the animal still searching for its home a familiar feeling of guilt washed over her, followed by a swell of sadness in her chest. Poor thing, she thought, watching it struggle.

‘Hey,’ Robert reached out, touching his fingers to her arm. ‘You all right?’

She looked at him, at the way the wind had dealt so roughly with his sandy hair, at the concerned look blooming among the lines on his face, at how right he looked here, now, in this place he knew so well. ‘Yeah. I guess you could say I’m a sentimental chef, rather than squeamish.’ Geoff certainly would have – had done so frequently, in fact.

Robert looked down into the bucket. ‘It’s not sentimental to care,’ he said. ‘Not even for something that’s going to end up in the cooking pot. I can do this, if you like.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘They’re for my kitchen, my cooking pot. It’s my responsibility.’

He said no more about it.