Not that Helen would dare to check up on Matt and whether he had girls sleeping over. That was Hugh’s job, but Hugh liked to stick his head under the covers and hide from any truly hard-hitting conversations with his children. He preferred the “if I don’t mention it, then it hasn’t happened” approach to parenting.

At the end of the long driveway, Helen paused at the letterbox, her breath hitching, but it was empty. She turned right and walked along the narrow road. There was no pavement for much of the way along this stretch. In summer, the road tended to be backed up with cars trying to wind down the narrow lanes to the beaches further along the coast, packed to the hilt with surfboards and bicycles, but this late into autumn it was quiet, with only the occasional supermarket delivery van or local’s Range Rover rumbling past.

Helen inhaled deeply, letting the crisp air fill her lungs and breathing out the strangeness that had cloaked her for the last few days. She walked blindly past houses that had been there since she was a kid, mostly modernised now for the holiday rental market, her mind empty, taking her time to let her eyes rest on the sea to her left as she tried to shake off the poor night’s rest. This was the kind of long and winding lane that tourists were nervous to drive along as you couldn’t see around the corners until you were right on top of them, but Helen knew the road from muscle memory after all these years. Further along the road, tall hedgerows and trees lined the lane like sentinels, separating the traffic from endless fields on one side and the sea on the other.

Today everything seemed muffled, the subtle rumble of the sea, the gentle moaning voices of the livestock in the fields, with only the seagulls jarring in their vocal discontent. The sea was an ever constant of this landscape. The tangy smell of it in her nostrils; the salty taste of it on her lips; the coarseness of it permanently coating her skin. Helen hadn’t realised she would miss it as much as she had when she had finally got away from this place. And much like the tide, it had pulled her back again.

She strolled along, feeling lighter than she had done in a while, letting her mind mull over her manuscript and where she should take it, loosely fleshing out a new plot, licking the salt from her lips as her hair tickled her face in the chilly breeze.