‘Here, these should fit you.’ Diana hands me a pair of black wellies with a jazzy silver glitter running through them and I wonder briefly if perhaps they belonged to Caro before shoving my socked feet into them.

‘Dad has a tradition,’ Rupert explains as he steps into his own wellies. ‘Every year we walk along to the beach to collect coal for the Christmas fire.’

‘Coal? On a beach?’

Rupert laughs at the expression on my face. ‘You’ll see. We don’t find a lot, less than we did when we were kids, but Dad loves it, so we all go along with it. It’s nice to be able to do it with you. I haven’t done it for years.’

I follow him through the back garden, out onto the little path that leads to the beach. Will calls to Rupert and he walks ahead to catch up with Will and Eamonn, the three of them all so similar I can see an older Rupert in Eamonn, a Rupert with grandchildren, and grey hair. Amanda leads the way, her wild curly hair tangled in the sea breeze and I find myself stepping in time with Diana, the two of us bringing up the rear.

‘I was worried about you, you know,’ she says, tucking her arm into mine.

‘Worried? What about?’ My heart skitters in my chest and for a moment I get a panicky feeling that maybe all of this was a ruse, that there is no happy family.

‘Well, it was quick wasn’t it? The courtship, the wedding.’ She watches me closely, her feet slowing to a stop. ‘Rupert closed himself off after Caro died. I didn’t think I’d ever see him happy again. He hid himself away in that big, old house she bought, and I thought he’d never get back on his feet again. He drank heavily for a while, you know. Called me, rambling on about guilt, and how he had failed Caroline.’

I didn’t know that. Rupert has never told me about how things were after Caro died. I flounder for a moment, ‘Diana, I…’

‘Thank you, Emily.’ Diana lays a cold hand against my cheek. ‘You brought him back to us.’ She starts walking again, the rest of the family already off the path and onto the sand. I can hear Rupert shouting to Will from the rocks that litter the edge of the landscape. ‘Caro would never have done this, you know.’

‘Amanda said she didn’t spend much time here.’ I am careful what I say, anxious about saying the wrong thing.

‘No. It was always her way. Never Rupert’s. She certainly wouldn’t have indulged Eamonn in his coal hunting; that definitely wasn’t her thing.’