Only when the crate clattered against the farmhouse decking did Sally realise she had never checked the contents of her mother's list. "I thought Mam just wanted some veg for dinner!" she cried, picking out one of the seven ample onions that rolled around the crate's base.

    "That she did, lass." Polly scanned the notepaper one last time, then slotted it between the swede and a punnet of foraged mushrooms. "That's your dinner for the whole week sorted. Took some proper graft to get all that ready for today, it did."

    Dropping the onion back with its peers, Sally sank to the floor beside the crate, her brow broken by anxious lines. Flick took one look at the bounty and released a long, sharp whistle. "Gotta say, Sal, you're a tougher gal than I am for carrying all this home yourself." The sloshing of liquid by her ear meant Sally did not need to look to know Flick's hip flask was back within her reach, though more tempting than before. "Need a morale boost?"

    Since they had landed outside the farmhouse, Flick had thrown on her flannel shirt, leaving it unbuttoned so it hung loose from her shoulders whenever she moved. The garment wore an acre of deep creases from its cramped journey between the seats, yet such messiness suited Flick perfectly. In fact, the girl's easy demeanour was what drove Sally to shake her head and send the flask back to its owner's side. "No thanks. I'll manage."

    "Heck yeah, you will! Hit me with your plan, bud."

    Sally stood up and dusted off her knees, her lips pursed. "I'll figure it out. There's a longer way home that's not as steep, I think I can walk back that way."

    Casting her eyes to the dark clouds above, Polly cursed under her breath. "You'll be doing no such thing, you hear? I'm not having your mammy calling by, asking after her radishes and her child!" She stepped inside the house, then returned a moment later staring at the screen of a mobile phone. "Seems Mr Rowe's too busy playing politics to answer his wife's calls. Typical man."

    A huff passed through Sally's flared nostrils. "At least he's not swilling in the pub all afternoon like Dad is."

    "Watch your tongue, lass. Jim Tremaine's the hardest worker Porthdruro's got to offer, and I'll not hear otherwise." Polly snapped her berry-stained fingers at Flick, perched on the decking fence with her flask still in her hand. "You on the other hand, Felicity, aren't doing anything but giving me a sore head here. Make yourself useful, see our Sally gets this veg home."

    Kicking off the fence, Flick clicked her tongue and unscrewed her flask. "You got it, Auntie. I'll just find myself a room, get unpacked, finish this old thing off –"

    The daggers brandished in Polly's eyes cut Sally to the core, and she had to look away as the woman's seething presence pushed Flick back to the fence. "You'll go now! Leave your blasted bags here, I'll sort them out. And stop drinking in daylight!" Nails struck against tin as she snatched Flick's whisky away, slamming the farmhouse door shut to block out the girl's protests.

    Flick blew a clutch of stray hairs out of her face. "So much for rural hospitality." Turning on her heels, she unlocked her car and tapped the stunned Sally on her shoulder. "This longer route that's less steep...which way is it?"

    As she hoisted the crate to her abdomen by its handles, Sally glanced at the tiny hatchback she had arrived in. Doubts grew in her gut, and she wondered whether the car even had any space in the back, let alone enough for a market stall's worth of produce. "Let's get this lot in the back of your car, then I'll show you."

    "Seems like you're going to be my navigator after all," Flick said, dropping her sunglasses over her face with a grin brighter than the shine off her blushing lenses. "Come on! It'll be fun, I swear."

    A combination of careful angling and sheer brute force was all it took to plug the crate into the back of the vehicle. After she succeeded in her third attempt to slam the boot lid shut, Sally heaved her leaden limbs into the car's passenger side. Beside her, Flick stirred the vehicle to life and followed Sally's directions to a track beside the cliffs, still wearing her sunglasses in the dim light of the late afternoon. The car's engine purred along the smooth trail, and partnered with the easing winds, it lulled Sally's eyelids shut. Soon, the world slipped beyond her senses, leaving her adrift on the gentle waves of sleep.

    Without warning, the soothing rumble vanished, and Sally swore she was falling until she jolted awake. Their journey had not been long, yet the world appeared much darker than when they left. Her elbow cracked against the door as she looked around, her nerves tightening. "Where am I?"

    The engine was silent, as was Flick, whose skin was suspiciously rosy against the shadowy surroundings. "Face-first in the fashion zone, that's where," she said, covering her smirk with her hand.

    "What? What are you on about?" Sally narrowed her eyes at Flick's pink face, then noticed the girl's missing sunglasses. Slowly, with surging embarrassment, she felt around her eyes and lifted Flick's sunglasses off her face. "You're not funny."

    Flick cracked a gleeful laugh. "And you're adorable when you're asleep. I couldn't resist!" As Sally tossed the glasses at her, Flick laughed harder and shook her passenger by her shoulder. "It's true, you don't even snore or anything! You're like a cuddly cat."

    It was not the worst comparison, given cats were Sally's preferred pet, and she had been worrying about the snoring question after hearing Ronan's jet turbine sinuses at work. "Thanks for the lift," she muttered, her eyes on the wooden gate to her family's cottage down the road ahead of her.

    "Anytime, Sal. I'll see you around!" Despite her words, Flick kept her car parked at the roadside until Sally had shut the gate behind her. By the time Sally had set the crate down at her front door, however, the girl had driven away, a quartet of shimmering amber leaves spiralling in her wake.

    The door opened before Sally set a hand on the handle. "What time do you call this, child?" her mother cried in her face, fingers tapping an invisible wristwatch. "Where've you been? Have to grow your own vegetables, did you?"

    Sally missed the friendly air of Flick's hatchback already. "Polly was working, and Martin wasn't around, so I had to wait around for a bit. I got a lift back, though."

    "A lift? Off who now?" Her mother's arched eyebrows could cut glass, and the edge in her questioning voice made even diamonds weep for fear.

    Though her arms begged her to stop, Sally refused to show the strain of hauling the stack of vegetables into the kitchen. "Polly's niece, she's visiting her."

    For the first time, her mother quelled her anger to make way for confusion. "Polly's got no niece I've heard of, lass."

    "They don't get along. I kept out of it."

    "Good." With a huff, her mother slammed the front door shut and shuffled her way to the kitchen at the back of the cottage. "Steer clear of all that. She sounds like trouble to me."

    Sally held her tongue. Flick was odd, no doubt, yet she had injected vibrance into an otherwise dull day, a bizarre energy Sally was sure she had never experienced before and would never feel again. Like Old Norton's storm, strange signs rarely amounted to much in a place like Porthdruro.

    ***

    Thursday was market day in the village, and the one day the whole Tremaine clan gathered around the table for a family breakfast. It was also Sally's least favourite day of the week.

    Being the youngest, Sally had spent years sitting at, then squeezing into, the seat between the polished oak table and the clean white wall panels. Ronan shuttled back and forth between his seat and the sleek granite countertop behind him, restocking the toast plate and refilling mugs of tea as needed while their mother splashed soap suds across the slate flagstone tiles. All the while, their father hunched over the table across from Sally, his reading glasses allowing him to pick apart whatever story had gotten tangled in his net that week.

    "Pack it in, will you, Jim?" her mother sighed, echoing a refrain that played between the walls every Thursday for as long as Sally recalled. This week was unusual for centring around local, rather than national, politics, though many of the notes remained the same. "He was voted in as councillor right and proper. Just give the man a chance! He might be what this village needs."

    Jim was never one to pack anything in. "Martin Rowe's a farmer, Julie! What's a farmer to know about what a fishing village needs?" He sipped his tea, and Ronan watched for his father's nod of approval that permitted him to return to his seat. "Probably barely knows about farming, seeing as he's hardly ploughed for the past year."

    "We haven't been doing much fishing either lately, to be fair," Ronan piped up as he sat down. Where Sally stayed quiet during her father's rants, her brother had no such qualms about tossing his tuppence in.

    Setting his paper down, Jim frowned and stared through the window by Sally's shoulder. "That's got nought to do with us, now, has it? That's Old Norton losing what few marbles he's got left. We'd be having storms every day if it were up to him!" He shook his head and rose from the table, shaking the crumbs off his red cable knit jumper. "I'll go have a chat with him before we set off today, see if I can talk some sense into him."

    Sally chewed through the last bite of her toast, savouring the salty butter pooled within the seeded bread. At least she would be spending the day at university, away from whatever row her father was about to start across the village. Even standing alone at the bus stop on the main road was more pleasant than her father's ranting.

    "I'll see if she's willing." Jim's voice stole into her train of thought, armed with an unfamiliar tentative tone. "Sally, there's a...tourist at the door asking for you."

    Peeling herself from the wall, Sally took her drink with her out of the kitchen. "What do you mean, 'a tourist'?" she asked, tilting her head to see past her father's head to the doorstep.

    The smile that greeted her gaze was bright enough to push Sally back. "Guilty as charged," Flick said with a wink, spinning her car key around her finger. "Hey, Sal! I'm heading up the coast, and I was wondering if you needed a ride to class."

    "Flick!" It had been over a week since Sally had seen her, yet the girl's batteries had not drained one bit. "I mean, I am going into town today, but I was going to take the bus that comes on the main road, like I always do."

    "A bus? No way, bud. I'll meet you at the car."

    Jim snapped his fingers and shook his head. "Hang on a minute. I haven't seen you anywhere here before. Who are you to be carting my daughter around, anyroad?"

    The question hung in the air, Flick leaning off the doorstep towards her car. "Wow. Someone woke up on the wrong side of the seabed." She ran her tongue across her teeth, a broad smirk on her face at the sight of Jim's surprise.

    Eyes wide, Sally placed herself between the two. "She's Polly Rowe's niece. She's the one that brought me home with the veg that time, remember?" A stretch of silence confirmed that Jim did not remember, and Sally looked to the clear sky for strength. "She's alright, Dad. She's not trouble."

    "Looks like trouble to me," Jim muttered through gritted teeth, scanning over Flick's loose green flannel shirt and ripped jeans. Every grind of his jaw sent desperate sparks down Sally's spine. "I see that clod Martin Rowe every other evening down at the Heron. How's it I've never heard of any nieces or the like?"

    Flick folded her arms and wrapped her side-plait around her index finger. "Maybe because I'm not his niece? I've barely met the guy, so you're more related to him than I am, Captain Cable Knit."

    Red flares burst across Jim's cheeks, yet his son's arms appeared around his shoulders to usher him back into the house. While Jim struggled for words, Ronan returned to the front door with his most diplomatic expression. "Sorry about that. Dad's not in the mood for strangers right now. I'm Ronan, Sally's brother, and you are...?"

    "Giving Sal a ride." Dangling her key from her finger, Flick tapped Sally's arm and winked. "Up to you, bud. I'll wait outside."

    Stunned, Ronan watched Flick vault over the cottage fence on the way to her car, his mouth stuck open. "She's...something else," he found the words to say, flicking his eyes to his sister's worried face. "I love you, Sally, and I know you're a sound sort, but Mam and Dad will be spitting fire if you go with her."

    Sally tapped her nails against her mug. When the alternative was cramming onto the single bus that hour with people from at least two dozen other villages, the promise of personal space that came with Flick's offer was too precious a luxury to turn down. "Flick's new here. She probably just wants someone to talk to. Not everybody was born in Porthdruro, you know."

    "Too right she wasn't!" His hands in his pockets, Ronan stared into his sister's eyes before letting his shoulders sink. "Fine, go if you want. I'll tell Mam and Dad we heard the bus broke down."

    The door swung shut behind Sally as she threw her free arm around her brother, her face pressed against his chest. "You're alright, you know?" she whispered into his jumper.

    Ronan sighed, his arms locked around his sister. "And you'd best know what you're getting into, lass."