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was eating better. She drove down to the village again for shopping and it was easier. A couple of days later, standing at her bedroom window, she saw a woman walking up the hill, a basket looped over one arm, disappearing into a dip of ground and then reappearing only briefly before passing out of sight, presumably heading for the small gabled house on the road up to the Hall. According to the solicitor The Lodge used to belong to the estate but had been sold off years before along with much else. Four acres of land Hillen Hall had now, more or less, which sounded a lot the solicitor had said, but really just meant the immediate garden and ‘the park’ – the rambling ground around the house on all sides. And clearly there was a footpath over it down to the village.
    May came in, grey and damp. On the first fine morning, Alex stood looking out of her bedroom window at the sea, blue and broken only by the white sail of a yacht. It had been a particularly bad night. She’d dreamt of Simon again, falling under the train and calling her name. He kept calling her and she couldn’t get there; she could see him but there seemed to be an invisible barrier which stopped her from reaching him. Even now, his voice still seemed to echo in her head and a shiver made her hug her arms tight around her body for comfort. She turned away, grabbed a cotton sweater and the dark glasses and went out, desperate to clear her head.
    A ten-minute walk from the rusty wrought iron gate in the front garden wall, over an overgrown shale path, brought her past the churchyard and the village hall with its mound of grass and car park to the edge of the village square. To her right was a small children’s playground and beyond it a new estate of modern houses. Straight ahead, a rising path between buildings brought her out by the harbour.
    She leaned on the harbour wall and looked out. The sandy floor of the harbour had been deserted by the tide and was ridged and damp. A gull was asleep, standing on one leg on the back of a tilted dinghy. To the right of the harbour mouth three massive stones stood at odd angles out of the water. On a previous visit she’d heard a yachtsman on the quay refer to them as The Dancing Bears. It was hard to see why.
    She turned and wandered aimlessly along the road away from the harbour, past a line of terraced fishermen’s cottages, labelled Harbour Row, then a large detached house set back in a leafy garden. Where the gritty road petered out into a footpath between trees, she saw a sign which read: To Longcombe Beach and restlessly followed it.
    *
    It was mid-afternoon by the time Alex returned along the harbour road. Her jeans were torn at both knees and down one shin, and blood had seeped into the fabric which stuck to her skin in places. Her hands were grazed too and she had sand in her hair. She limped a little as she walked.
    A woman stood at the gate of the detached house as she passed and called her name in a kind but insistent voice. ‘Miss Munroe? Miss Munroe?’ Alex stopped and turned. The house had an elegant, Georgian front, narrow but tall, with windows let into the roof, a lovingly tended garden, and a hanging sign which read Captain’s Cottage: B and B. The woman had opened the gate and was beckoning her. She was wearing yellow rubber ankle boots and large green gardening gloves.
    ‘Are you all right dear?’ she repeated as Alex approached. ‘You’ve obviously had a fall. Can I clean up those scratches for you?’ With the back of a glove, she pushed a curly lock of grey hair back from her face, leaving a dirty smudge of soil behind.
    Alex shook her head and offered a weak smile.
    ‘Thank you but I’m fine really. It’s nothing.’
    ‘It’s no trouble. Let me look at them for you. It’ll only take a minute.’ The woman peeled off a glove and held out her hand, smiling warmly and creasing up the floury soft skin of her cheeks. ‘I’m Elizabeth Franklin. Call me Liz. What happened to