The ink on the estate agent's contract is a sharp, unforgiving black against the bone-cream paper. Elin Carradine rests her pen beside the document, her fingers still vibrating from the pressure of the signature. Outside the kitchen window, the north Norfolk sky is the colour of wet slate, heavy with the scent of salt and impending rain. The house feels impossibly quiet without the rhythmic hum of the kiln from the studio across the yard. Owen’s studio. For two years, she has kept the door locked, letting the dust settle over the wheels and the wedging tables like a shroud.
She stands and moves to the window, smoothing the front of her oatmeal linen smock. Her hands, once quick and certain with clay, are restless now, tracing the thin silver band on her left finger. Selling the space feels like a second funeral, a final stripping of the glaze that held her life together. She had expected the morning to be empty, a long stretch of grey hours spent box-packing and remembering. Instead, the silence is punctured by the rhythmic crunch of tyres on flint.
A dark car turns into the lane, its engine a low, sophisticated thrum that doesn't belong to this coastal isolation. Elin holds her breath, her heart tripping against her ribs as the vehicle rounds the bend toward the house. On the gravel driveway, headlights slow to a halt, and a car door begins to open.
