“Fish!” I exclaimed. Belinda looked at me inquiringly. “That’s what the old man said when I asked him for directions to White Sails. He said, ‘Err wants fish.’ Maybe that’s what the locals call it. The fish house, perhaps.”

“Well, at least we made it,” Belinda said. “It looks like quite a pretty little place, doesn’t it?”

“It does,” I agreed, although I wasn’t so sure. It was a simple one-story cottage, built of rough Cornish stone. There were white shutters at the windows, but one of them was now hanging loose, flapping in the wind and in danger of flying off at any moment. Bushes had been planted around the house, in the hope, probably, of sheltering it from the worst of the wind. As we came down the last of the steps I tasted the salt of spray. Belinda paused at the front door and fished in her handbag for a key.

“For heaven’s sake, don’t drop it,” I pleaded. “We’d never find it again.”

“Don’t worry. I’m quite capable,” she said. She stepped up to the front door and waved the key at me. It turned in the lock and Belinda opened the door triumphantly. “I suppose it’s too much to hope that there is electricity,” she said as we both stepped into a damp and musty room. She fished in her handbag again and produced a cigarette lighter. “Lucky that one of us smokes,” she said. She flicked it on and held it up, illuminating the room. What we saw did not look too promising. We were standing in a living room with a table and two chairs on one side, a battered old sofa in front of a fireplace on the other. Belinda located an oil lamp on the windowsill and miraculously there was oil in it.

“Do you know how to light one of these things?” She carried it over to the table.

“Not really. We used them when the power went out at Castle Rannoch but we always had servants to light them.”

“That’s just the problem, isn’t it?” Belinda said. “We’ve never had to stand on our own feet.”

“Don’t you think it would be wise to go back to the nearest village and stay the night somewhere? We need to eat anyway.”

“You’re suddenly obsessed with eating,” Belinda said. “Are you pregnant?”

“No, I’m not,” I snapped at her. “I’m just a normally hungry person. And then we can explore this place properly in the morning.”

“That might be a good idea,” Belinda agreed. “I wonder where the nearest pub might be? Probably all the way back in Rock. I’m not sure there was a pub in Polzeath.”

“What would we find if we kept on going the way we were heading?”