Harold and I lived then, as we do now, in a large house in the village, a half mile walk to Evangelina’s place. Being the forge, hers is the last of all the houses and beyond it is open country and the sea. I always loved that walk to her house, once in the morning, and then again in the early evening, when I said goodbye to Harold and set off from our house to see her. The water and the big sky and the hills rising behind.

Harold would always ask me, when I came home after my visits how ‘the poor woman’ was. He would always say how good I was to keep going there and spending so much time with her. Then he would kiss me on my forehead and pat my hand and tell me some story from the bank.

Spring came and in Evangelina’s garden we put in peas and raspberries and potatoes, a quince against the wall at the back of the house. The beans were getting so tall we had to support them with ropes strung between pairs of stakes, one at either end of each row.

It was Sonny Peen who saw Joseph Hine walking back across the bay.

Harold and I were away.

The Ulverston bank had closed for a day’s holiday and Harold had arranged a trip to Maryport. It seems foolish now, but as we walked about through the streets and around the harbour and sat over our lunch in The Golden Lion, I actually found myself looking out for Joseph Hine to see if this might be where he’d decided in the end to begin his new life away from Evangelina. It seems foolish now, in view of everything that has happened, that in a kiosk near the harbour wall, I bought Evangelina a china thimble with A Present From Maryport written along the bottom in tiny blue script.