‘I’ll have a look at it now,’ Axel says, glancing up from his phone.

‘Good idea. Lina, can you show him where it is?’

I unlock the back door and take him out to the tiny boatshed.

‘So this guy was inside the entire time?’ Axel asks.

I meet his eyes. ‘Yeah, I think so,’ I say. I reach for the padlock and push the key in but it doesn’t turn.

‘Careful,’ he says, taking the padlock now from my hand. ‘Last thing we want is the key breaking in it.’ He tries it himself, but still it won’t turn. ‘Give me a moment.’ He strides back to the house and returns with a can of lubricant. He sprays it inside the padlock, tries the key again. It doesn’t open. ‘You sure this is the key?’

I peer at it closely. ‘Maybe not.’

He pulls it out, holds it up to the sunlight, looks at it closely. ‘They always look the same, don’t they?’ he says, with a grin. ‘You got any others I could try?’

I try to remember the last time we opened this shed. It’s been three or four years at least. ‘In the basement there’s a shoebox of junk where we keep old keys. Could be in there. I’ll run and grab them.’

‘No, you stay,’ he says. ‘I’ll go have a look. The basement you said?’

‘Yeah. Under the workbench.’

When he returns he paws through the shoebox of bits and pieces, pulling out a charger for a mobile phone they stopped making in the nineties, old drill bits, a UK plug adaptor.

‘A few keys at the bottom,’ he says.

Claire is coming towards us.

‘Come on, Axel,’ she says. ‘We need to pick up bread and coffees. Cain’s already got the bacon on and the hash browns in the oven. Decaf latte?’ she says to me.

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Sure. I’ll have found the key by the time you get back, Axel. It’s got to be somewhere.’

‘Otherwise we could bolt cut it open,’ he says.

Claire turns back to me with a smile. ‘Cain said he desperately needs your help to make your famous scrambled eggs.’

‘Hope he hasn’t talked them up too much,’ I say.

They go to our car and climb inside. Axel starts the engine and they back out.