Port Charles was ever-changing. Restaurants, bars, pop-ups, concessions and businesses with expensive interiors and grinning merchants came and went with the seasons. More often than not, those same merchants who arrived in paradise were, by the end of the summer mere months later, out of pocket and cursing all they had invested, financially and emotionally. Smiles were replaced with tears as they packed up their wares along with their dreams, positioning the large ‘For Sale’ sign in the window, hoping to attract another dreamer with high hopes and deep pockets. Then they would throw the keys on to the estate agent’s desk, before trundling back up-country to wherever it was they had once planned to escape from. She would never understand how they could bear to leave this little slice of heaven.

Her family’s cobbled pathway, the deep window seat in the bedroom she shared with Ruby, the tarnished brass door plates, the rusted spear-headed gate with the creaky hinge, even the ancient Raeburn – in these things she took solace. They were permanent, unchanged and they attached her to the land as surely as if her feet had sprouted roots that went all the way down to the last of the tin that nestled beneath her. It had pretty much been the same for all of Merrin’s life and she liked knowing that the wood flooring had felt the touch of her relatives’ footsteps, and the soft, knitted blankets on the arms of the chairs the brush of her grandma’s fingertips.

She had a glorious life to look forward to – not that she would ever say it, mindful of the feelings of her family and worried that Ruby would rib her about ‘acting all high and mighty’ – now she would be living in the grandest house in Port Charles. Her sister, she knew, wouldn’t miss the chance to tease her. Not that Merrin would be going far, and she planned on visiting daily, quite unable to imagine a life without the daily banter and cuppa around the range. She pictured her children in this very room and beyond the front door, where the beach had been her playground, and everyone who lived close – neighbours and kin alike – had been her babysitters. But the fact remained that she couldn’t wait to climb the stairs to the chauffeur’s flat above the garages at the Old Rectory; she just hoped there might be a spot free for her own beloved VW Beetle, christened Vera Wilma Brown.