It was a dinky house, she thought, pulling up outside it, a toy house held up off the ground by foundation blocks that looked as though the next gale would split and sunder them, bringing down the child-sized wooden structure in a heap. Yet the building had survived for a hundred and fifty years. One wall was dominated by a crumbling brick chimney, and Anthea was reminded of her neighbour’s cottage with fruit trees cleverly arranged around it. If a developer bought three of these and wanted to replace them with units, advertising first-rate water views, would anyone complain? Chris’s car was parked outside. The blinds at the front were drawn. The chimney looked stuck on, an afterthought, and yet would have been a central feature of the original construction. The family would have gathered round the stove to cook and keep warm, and would have slept near it as well. When Anthea had learnt that Chris had shared the house with his mother until her death from cancer, she’d thought that this partly explained his character.
