‘Dad said we were coming to yours for lunch. We’ve seen the pod – and they’ve got the baby with them!’

‘Robbie, stop yelling,’ came his father’s voice. Robert MacKenzie appeared beside his son and rested a hand on his excited head, looking through the door at Anna with an apologetic smile. ‘Sorry. It’s been quite a morning.’

Two more figures appeared beside him – another boy of Robbie’s age and a man that Anna assumed was the child’s father.

‘This is Fraser and Jamie. We’ve all been out on dolphin patrol, as you will have gathered,’ Robert MacKenzie explained, ‘and I thought we might be in time to join your lunch club. Have you got room for four hungry mariners?’

‘I – yes,’ Anna said. ‘Yes, there’s still space.’

‘You don’t mind?’ Robert asked. ‘Maybe you’d prefer to keep it for new faces…?’

‘Of course not,’ she told him, smiling. ‘It’s lovely of you to come. Take a seat, I’ll be out in a moment. There are two guests already there.’

Anna went back to the kitchen and picked up the water jug, adding it to a tray of glasses and a plate of gougères she’d made in case she needed extra time in the kitchen. Carrying everything out into the sunlight, she saw that Robert and his friend had seated themselves opposite each other in the middle of the bench, as a kind of buffer between her two other guests and the two boys.

‘Hello, everyone,’ she said. ‘Welcome to lunch at the Fishergirl’s Luck.’ She put the tray down in the centre of the table. ‘Please help yourselves. Lunch will be served shortly.’

‘Anna,’ Robert said, ‘let me quickly introduce Fraser.’

His friend got up and held out a hand with a warm grin. ‘Pleased to meet you, Anna,’ he said. ‘I hear you’ve got a bit of an adventurous spirit, which always goes down well with me. Can’t wait to try this food of yours.’

‘Oh – thank you,’ Anna said, slightly taken aback at this characterization. ‘You’re local too, then?’

Fraser sat down again, grinning. He was a big man, broad-shouldered with a hugely square jaw and a dark mop of wiry black hair. ‘Born and bred in Macduff,’ he nodded at his friend, ‘grew up with this reprobate. We live in Elgin now, though – it’s easier for my wife, she commutes to Inverness every bloody day.’

‘Dad!’ Jamie exclaimed, digging him in the ribs with a sharp elbow.

‘Oops, sorry,’ Fraser said, putting a finger to his mouth but smiling behind it all the same. ‘Don’t tell Ma, all right? I’ll be in the doghouse.’

Jamie squinted up at him. ‘What’s it worth?’

Robert laughed. ‘He’s got you there, Fraser.’

The young couple at the other end of the table laughed along too and Fraser turned to them with a dramatic, long-suffering sigh.