‘She started converting the place bit by bit way back in the 1940s,’ Robert went on. ‘First using her own savings from the herring and then what her father had left her. She bought her own boat – it was only a small dinghy, but still, it meant she could fish for herself in-shore if she wanted. She’d have been in her late twenties, early thirties then. Barbara says everyone saw it as a bit of a joke at the time. They always expected Bren to give the place up and finally get married, even though she was an old maid by that point. But she never did. I think, actually, that accounts for some of Dougie’s bitterness. I think he might have asked her at some point.’

‘What? To marry him?’

Robert nodded. ‘Not that he’s ever told me that, or ever would.’

‘Maybe he’d thought that being given her dad’s property meant he’d get Bren too.’

‘Maybe. Anyway, neither of them ever married. When Bren died I actually offered to let him move into the place. His needs so much work, and he can’t keep up with it. It’s getting worse every year. But he point-blank refused. “I’ll not set one foot in that harpy’s hovel” were his exact words.’

‘ “The Fishergirl’s Luck”,’ Anna mused. ‘Even the name sounds defiant to me now. Do you know why she called it that?’

Robert smiled. ‘I think even that might have been a bit of a dig at Dougie, to be honest. He was one of the men who’d taunted her for wanting to be out fishing. But in the end, Bren’s dinghy was the only boat left in Crovie harbour, and she went out fishing from it until she was well past eighty.’

Anna shook her head. ‘I wish I could have met her.’

‘I think she would have liked you,’ Robert said. ‘And I think she’d tell you to ignore Douglas McKean in exactly the same way she did all her life.’ He looked at his watch. ‘And now we should start back,’ he said. ‘Robbie’s at an afterschool club but he’ll be home soon. I’m with the lifeboat tonight so I’ll have to bunk at Macduff. I want to be there for supper so I can have some time with him first.’

‘Who looks after him when you have to work?’

‘Barbara. She lives two doors down.’

‘I think I’ve met her, you know,’ Anna said, thinking of the woman who had marched towards her to circle Crovie’s north and south poles on that first morning she’d been in the village. ‘She seemed a force to be reckoned with.’

‘She’s a wonder,’ said Robert, ‘and without her I’d be in even more of a mess than I am.’