He turned to look left and right. You can see the lighthouse from there, small against the horizon. He pointed towards it and so we set off in that direction.

‘Let’s walk on the beach,’ I suggested, and we made our way down the sandy concrete steps.

The beach was busy with day-trippers and the pale sand was dotted with patches of colour. People had set themselves up for the duration with cold boxes, coloured windbreaks and stripy umbrellas, and children in varying states of undress scampered backwards and forwards between the water and their parents. The tide had turned and was on its way back in, but it would be a while before it reached its high-water mark.

‘Come here often?’ I asked as a joke, but Marlon seemed to take me seriously.

‘Not as often as I’d like,’ he said. ‘I never seem to make the time, and my mates are all married with kids these days. It’s difficult to find people to do things with. I could just come on my own, but I reckon the seaside is a place to visit in a gang. It can be a bit depressing on your own.’

Well, he was right about that, at least, but to say so would be giving away more than I wanted to share.

‘What’s it like working at the Hall?’ I asked.

‘I like it better in the winter,’ he said. ‘When we’re closed to visitors. They make such a mess. They pick the flowers and they steal cuttings when they think we’re not looking. Like we don’t see them hovering about with their little knives snipping bits off our plants.’ He made a little snipping movement with his finger and thumb and narrowed his eyes into slits. It made me laugh.

‘Why don’t you stop them?’ I asked him.

‘Lady H – that’s Clio’s mum – said to leave them to it. She says she’s got plenty of stock and there’s more than enough to share, which is all very nice, but it drives me potty. We just end up with lop-sided bushes!’

He laughed, and it was like he didn’t have a care in the world except his wonky foliage. Maybe he didn’t, I thought. Lucky sod.

‘And what are they like, Clio’s family?’ I asked, unable to resist the opportunity to find out more given that Clio rarely talked about them.

‘Lady H is a sweetheart. She’s really kind and thoughtful. You wouldn’t know that she’s aristocracy. There are no airs and graces, none of that. Mr Montgomery Smith seemed nice enough, too, although I didn’t really know him. I always got the feeling there was more to him than met the eye, but he was usually away with the orchestra or watching Formula One racing, so I barely saw him. The son’s a prat.’