‘What on earth are you doing?’ he said, from the other side of the gate.

‘Flying a kite,’ she said, bringing the hammer down in another violent stab. ‘For goodness’ sake, what does it look like I’m doing? The roof’s leaking.’

‘It looks like you’re about to break your neck,’ he said.

‘I’m perfectly—’ Edie’s sentence ended in a little shriek as the ladder began to slip.

Ezra was through the gate in an instant. He caught her just before she hit the ground. The ladder crashed down along with the hammer, landing with a clang and a clatter on the paving slabs that formed her garden path. There was a moment of silence and Ezra could feel Edie’s hands clutching at his arms as he steadied her. His books had fallen around his feet.

‘All right?’ he asked, after a second.

Edie cleared her throat and pushed away from him, though not before he felt her tremble slightly. ‘I’m fine,’ she said, and then, without looking at him and as if it were a difficult thing to say, ‘Thank you.’

He nodded. ‘Please don’t do that again.’

She looked up at him then, eyes narrowed, silver hair slicked back by the rain. He prepared himself for her to snap something at him, but instead she looked him over and frowned.

‘Where’s your coat?’

He looked down at himself, then saw his poor books and stooped to collect them. ‘Oh. I left it at the lighthouse. For Gilly.’

She said nothing and when he looked at her again he caught a fleeting expression in her eyes; something that he couldn’t quite identify but that wasn’t the ire he’d expected. Then Edie huffed and shook her head, turning away.

‘Soft, the lot of you,’ she declared, heading down her path, leaving the offending ladder where it was. ‘You’d better get indoors and get dry. At your age a chill could be fatal.’ Edie looked back at him when she reached her door, waving at the gate that separated their two properties. ‘You can go that way.’

Ezra hesitated, then followed her down the path. ‘Make sure you latch it behind me,’ he said, when he reached the gate. ‘It’s not good weather for a barbecue.’

She glanced at him, a brief slash of amusement in her sharp green eyes, and in the next second she had shut the gate behind him and was gone.

Once through his door the first thing Ezra did was reach for the telephone. He dialled the bookshop’s number from memory and Rachel answered.

‘Gilly doesn’t have a coat,’ he said. ‘I’ve left mine in the porch. Tell her to take it and use what’s in the pockets, too.’

He put the phone down and stared at the wall that separated his living space from Edie Strang’s.

Gilly had come into the bookshop as soon as it had opened because it had been pouring with rain all night and her tiny crappy tent had got so wet that she was worried the only dry clothes she had were going to get soaked. She’d thought she might be able to sneak in and find a corner behind a bookshelf to dry out, but Rachel had looked up from the counter the minute she’d poked her head around the door. She had smiled and said Hello, isn’t it a horrible day out there, come in – the wood burner is going full pelt and there’s fresh coffee on. And then, because Gilly hadn’t been able to stop her stomach grumbling at the smell of buttered toast as she’d taken the hot coffee: Would you like some toast? There’s plenty of bread.