Marnie let the dogs off their leads and they followed her round the narrow path at the side of the caretaker’s cottage, slippery with sodden leaves, and into the back garden. It was overgrown, reverted to the wild, although Marnie could still make out the shapes of her father’s vegetable beds and the swing he’d bought second-hand from the small ads of the local paper and put up for Lucy when she was a little girl. The back door was unlocked. It always was. Nobody bothered with this place. Nobody ever came except Marnie and, occasionally, John. She went inside. The cottage had the lonely, unloved feeling of empty buildings everywhere even though much of the old furniture was still in situ, it being too big to fit into John’s new bungalow. It smelled of damp and sea air, of wind and shipping oil and mice.

The electricity supply to the cottage had been disconnected when John moved out, but the gas cooker was supplied by cylinders, like the ones used in the holiday park. For as long as the cylinders contained some residual propane, they provided Marnie and John with a convenient means of sourcing heat and hot drinks while out walking. She filled the pan left behind in the cottage for this very purpose with water from the tap, lit the gas with a match, spooned coffee granules into one of the two remaining mugs and stood as close as she could to the flames, waiting for it to boil.

It was graveyard cold inside the cottage, ice patterns on the insides of the windowpanes and spider webs occupying the corners. The small flames didn’t make much difference. When the drink was made, Marnie took it outside and sat on the back step in the weak sunshine, cupping the mug in her hands. Birds were singing in the overgrown, raggedy trees, the estuary glimmered beyond; Tessy came and settled beside her, Luna stretched out in a patch of sunlight beside the swing and Mister stood, squat, panting and nervous, waiting for trouble.

Memories crowded around Marnie. Going for long walks with her father and Trip alongside the estuary, birdwatching, binoculars on a strap round John’s neck and she skipping along happily beside him, mud on her legs, plastic sunglasses with lenses shaped like hearts, an elastic of sherbet sweets looped around her neck. Marnie loved their barefoot expeditions along the beach; John, who did not share Denise’s fear of sinking sand, allowing his daughter to run free. She remembered cartwheeling on the grass fringes of the beach, her hair whipping, the sun catching her eyes; climbing onto the rib of one of the wrecks and adopting a yoga pose copied from Camille deVillars, balancing on one bare foot, the other leg bent at the knee, her hands pressed together as if in prayer beneath her chin and her hair blowing behind.

‘Look at me, Dad! Look at me!’