‘Sorry,’ said the woman, who was loaded down with bags, ‘I didn’t mean to make you jump.’

‘And I didn’t mean to break this,’ I said, showing her the damage and feeling my face flush as I bit my lip. ‘It’s cracked all the way down one side.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said kindly, shaking her head. ‘I’m sure we’ll be able to glue it back together.’

I set the pot aside, located the key and finally stepped into the cottage. The door opened straight into the bijou sitting room I had seen online. It was even cosier than I had imagined with a squishy sofa and chair, an old pine desk under the sash window and a well-stocked bookcase next to the brick fireplace which housed a log-burning stove. It was definitely tighter for space than I had imagined when I posed for my holiday snap.

You would have been stretched to make it a comfortable holiday spot for two, unless you were in the first flush of romance and happy to live on top of each other. Not an emotion I had felt for a very long time. Relationships were another thing I had sacrificed in my quest to keep focused on my career. Anything beyond half a dozen or so dates – or sooner if things felt even remotely as though they were heading towards serious – were ruled out. I had disappointed a good share of men in recent years and my heart had taken a bit of a battering too. As a result, I was sworn off romance (although not uncomplicated sex with no strings attached), for good.

I baulked at the thought that, if my interpretation of what Mum had written was correct, then I was like my father in that sense. I was certain that he and his lover could have managed to feel right at home with the compromised space in Crow’s Nest Cottage, but then quickly kicked the thought away. I would get around to the further details of Mum’s diaries at some point, but now was not the time. Now I wanted to enjoy getting to know the cottage which, given its dimensions, probably wouldn’t take long.

I heard the woman with the bags follow me inside and breathe a sigh of relief as she put them down. For a moment I had a horrible feeling the cottage had been double-booked but then it dawned on me who she was.

‘You must be Sam,’ I said, confident that I had made the right assumption.

‘No,’ she smiled, quickly closing the door on the rain. ‘Sam’s the cottage owner and landlord of the Smuggler’s next door. I’m Sophie. I’m a friend of his.’