Climbing upstairs to her usual bedroom at the top of the house, Laura chucked her case on her bed and opened the window to breathe in the sea air. Gulls were circling and the sky over the harbour was turning a hazy pink.
‘Not long until sunset,’ she smiled. ‘I know what that means.’
Sure enough, moments later she heard Aunt Jane calling. ‘Come on down, darling! It’s sundowner time!’
This pre-dinner ritual had been the same for as long as Laura could remember. Visiting as a child, she’d be given juice in a grown-up cocktail glass.
‘There’s no need for that, Jane – she’s fine with a beaker,’ her late mother would say, rolling her eyes at her sister.
When Laura was old enough (or perhaps a couple of years before), Aunt Jane gave her champagne in a crystal flute. It had felt wonderfully sophisticated to sit, listening to jazz and chatting, in the high-ceilinged room that looked across the English Channel to France.
The house was tall, elegant and interesting, rather like Aunt Jane herself. She’d always lived alone, but loved to fill the bedrooms with visitors. And she resisted all suggestions from certain quarters that she should move to somewhere more manageable. ‘Downsizing,’ she would grimace. ‘What an ugly word that is.’
When Laura married and had daughters of her own, she would take them to stay in the holidays and show them her favourite corners – the velvet window seat that made the perfect spot for reading, the walk-in larder with its enticing aroma of almond and, best of all, the cellar, where there was a 6ft-high
