Jazz hoped that in a couple of months Marsh Cottage would look as picturesque on the inside as it promised from without.

It was brighter outside today, and Jazz decided to go for a morning stomp across the marshes to the sea. She put on boots and a Barbour, opened the front door and stepped outside, breathing in the rejuvenating fresh sea air.

Her cottage was situated on the coast road that separated the village from the marshes and the sea. In the summer, the road became congested with tourists using it to gain access to the beaches and coastal villages of North Norfolk, but today, at the end of January, it was deserted.

Jazz felt a small glimmer of contentment as she studied the view. Its flatness and lack of trees presented a bleak, unwelcoming picture, but Jazz coveted its rawness. There was nothing pretty about the landscape, nothing to break up the starkness of a horizon that stretched for miles on either side. The simple elegance of the land’s distant curvature with the sea and the sheer vastness of the vista appealed to her unfussy nature.

As she crossed the road, she caught sight of a man coming out of the post office out of the corner of her eye, fifty or so yards away. Continuing across the road and onto the rough, marshy grass, she was focused on the comforting squelch of water underfoot when she thought she heard someone calling her name.

Dismissing it as the screeches of curlews that had gathered in a circle to the right of her, she continued up the incline, the only protection the cottage had from flooding – a moot point when she had been trying to secure a mortgage.

‘Jazmine! DI Hunter! Please, wait a second!’

This time there was no mistaking it. She stopped and turned to look back at the road.

Christ! What the hell’s he doing here? Jazz was appalled as she retraced her footsteps. She stopped a few yards away, offering him a small smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

‘Hello, DI Hunter.’

‘Why are you here, Sir?’

‘Nice to see you too,’ said Norton, offering his hand.

‘I’m sorry,’ she sighed, finally, walking towards him and taking it, ‘I wasn’t expecting you, that’s all.’

‘It’s quite all right. Now, are you going to invite me in before I freeze to death in this flimsy suit?’

‘Yes, of course. Come in.’

Once inside, Jazz settled Norton on the sofa and stoked up the fire. She made them coffee, then perched on a wooden dining chair.

‘Nice little place,’ he said. ‘Cosy.’

‘Thanks,’ she said, ‘I like it.’

There was an awkward pause.

‘So, Jazmine, how are you?’

It was odd hearing Norton call her by her first name. It underlined the extent to which her life had changed over the past months, but it also felt patronising.

‘I’m fine,’ she said.

‘You look . . . better. Got a bit more colour since I last saw you.’