‘Look at me, Rubes! Look at me! Go and fetch Dr Levington and then go and find Dad in the pub and I’ll sit with Gramps. It’s all going to be okay.’

Merrin’s heart had felt like it might explode and yet she had smiled, kept calm and taken control. Not bad for a nine-year-old. It hadn’t all been okay, far from it – Gramps had died – but she knew enough to pretend for as long as she needed to. She missed him still, but it had been a salient lesson that when the shit hit the fan, there might not be anyone else around to take the tiller; sometimes the most responsible person around was you.

She felt a familiar unease at the sight of Lizzie Lick plucking shells from the shoreline and stuffing them into the pockets of her smock, and averted her eyes from the woman most thought of as a weirdo. Merrin glanced back at her surreptitiously with no desire to engage, as Lizzie, who danced to her own tune, mumbled to herself, as per usual.

Breathing long and slow, Merrin closed her eyes briefly, feeling instantly better, calmed. This was the perfect spot with the widest view and she could spend hours here, staring at the waves. Her dad once told her they were the heads of white, foaming horses, cantering up to the break and crashing, before making a sharp turn and petering to nothing on their return. It was now impossible for her to see them in any other way. Looking out over the purple bruise of sky where clouds hung low over the ocean, she offered up a silent prayer.

Please don’t rain! Not on my wedding day . . .

The waves roared against the harbour wall in response. The Kellows lived in one of four solid and compact family cottages on the harbourside, although the end two had been sold off a while since as holiday homes. The hands of Kellow men had built them well over two centuries ago, the stones and rocks gathered from the quarry up the coast, each one hefted down to the harbourside. Her dad and the five generations of Kellows before him made their living fishing. And number one Kellow Cottages was where she’d been born and the only place she had lived.