Joan demurred for a moment, checking her watch. ‘I’ve got to be back for lunch.’

‘It’s only half eleven. There’s a whole hour before lunchtime,’ Kath said, pulling on her jumper. ‘So let’s get a move on.’

The best part of cycling to the ferry was the long downward slope as you left the town, freewheeling as fast as you dared, bending as low as possible over the handlebars to reduce wind drag – that’s what Mark called it – so that you kept going halfway along the flat part. You could compete to see how long you could keep going before having to turn the pedals, or if you were on your own you could judge the distance you had travelled before having to pedal by the little flags marking the greens on the unkempt golf course that lay between the road and the sea.

Cycling was the perfect kind of freedom: the air rushing through your hair, the road speeding by beneath you. Kath hated the winter, when that liberty was often curbed by the weather, but in summertime her bike went with her everywhere.

Some of her wealthier friends rode horses and she’d even sat on one briefly, but Kath could never really see the point of it. ‘Why would you want all that bother of feeding them and clearing up their muck when you can get there faster on two wheels?’ she’d scoff. ‘You just don’t get it, do you?’ they’d retort, rolling their eyes. ‘A horse is a living being. It can love you, and you love it back. You can’t have a relationship with a bit of metal.’

They reached the ferry in record time, parked their bikes in front of the Ferry Boat Inn and strolled past the fishermen’s shacks. Over on the other side of the estuary, on a small bluff overlooking the junction of the river and the sea, stood the fairy-tale towers and turrets of Bawdsey Manor, an architectural confection built as a holiday home by a Victorian millionaire glorying in the name of Sir William Cuthbert Quilter. Kath’s grandfather Poppa had told her that Quilter also owned several hotels in Felixstowe as well as being a Member of Parliament, so there were plenty who’d doff their caps to his memory.

Poppa worked as a gardener at the Manor and had even, on one occasion, been inside the house itself. As a child sitting on his knee, Kath had listened entranced to his descriptions of Sir Cuthbert’s study lined in gold-tooled leather, the beautiful wood panelling and heavy oak staircase leading upwards to heaven knew how many salons and bedrooms, the double-height hall with a musicians’ gallery above, the mirror-lined ballroom and the wonderful views from the terraces.

‘They say there’s a hundred rooms,’ he said as she tried to imagine what anyone, even someone with a large family, could possibly do with a hundred rooms.

What Poppa coveted most was the billiard room, with racks for the cues and brass sliders on the walls for keeping score. ‘I could’ve spent many a happy hour in there,’ he said, the smile crinkling his whole face. ‘A glass of port or two, a cue in my hand, and that view across the North Sea with nothing between you and the horizon. What bliss.’