I parked my car and rushed across the square to the newsagent’s, where, under Mr Flannery’s watchful eye, I found a basic reporter-style notepad.

‘Sheelagh told me about this Oliver bloke,’ he said, when I reached the counter.

I smiled politely, relieved she hadn’t yet spread the news about seeing him at Seaview Cottage. ‘His name’s Ollie, not Oliver.’

‘Never heard of him before.’ He took my money, probably disgruntled that I hadn’t secured Meryl Streep – or anyone else from the cast of Mamma Mia!

‘Don’t you read your newspapers or magazines?’ I cast an eye over the front covers. ‘I’m sure he’s been featured on their gossip pages.’

Mr Flannery laid his bony hands on the counter. ‘I don’t go in for gossip,’ he said, which I didn’t believe for a second. Everyone I’d met so far seemed keen to know what everyone else was up to. ‘I don’t understand this reality lark. Why would people want to watch ordinary people do silly things?’

There’s nothing ordinary about Ollie, I wanted to say, but mindful it might sound fangirlish I refrained. ‘There’ll be an update very soon,’ I promised.

‘I hope so,’ he said darkly. ‘Those tree lights aren’t going to switch on by themselves.’

I managed not to say that anyone could flick a switch if it came to it, and left him grumbling at another customer, who’d dared to ask if he had any paperclips. ‘We’re not a bloody stationery shop. Try WH Smith’s, up Main Street.’

Outside, I paused to admire the silver mesh balls on the fir tree planted in the square, which was wrapped in LED lights just waiting to burst into life. A chalkboard bravely proclaimed a ‘Special Guest’ would be doing the honours at 5 p.m. on 13^th December, and that Santa would be handing out presents to children who’d been ‘good’.

I smiled, remembering my last Christmas at Kingswood Primary, and the children’s expressions when Santa – one of the dads dressed up – had popped in to tell them a story. They’d looked so joyful – until little Todd Lafferty, whose parents were ‘free-thinkers’ said, ‘Everybody knows that Father Christmas isn’t real,’ and the rest had burst into tears.

Across the cobbled square was the flower stall Jane had mentioned, its green-and-cream canopy strung with fairy lights, beneath which a rosy-faced woman, surrounded by buckets of flowers, was chatting to a customer. I didn’t recognise the woman, but there was a wheelbarrow nearby with Ruby’s Blooms painted on the side, so I guessed she must be Ruby.

Spotting Cooper’s Café on the corner of the parade – surely the café Craig had visited – I hurried over, keen to get out of the cold. The interior was warm and steamy, the air filled with chatter and laughter and the clink of spoons, against a background of Christmas music. After ordering a hot chocolate and a toasted teacake, I removed my coat, then sat at a table by the window. I ate slowly, enjoying the sensation of buttery dough and raisins on my tongue.

Outside, the sky was powder-white, and the wind had whipped the sea into foamy peaks. The tide was out, and the beach and pier were deserted. I dismissed the brief but ridiculous idea of going for a run on the sand. I kept a pair of trainers in my car, just in case, but the thought of going to get them wasn’t appealing. Anyway, I didn’t have much time. Leaning back, I wrapped my hands around my mug, and watched a couple of seagulls soaring high, before dive-bombing the choppy water.

If I hadn’t had guests to get back to, I might have taken a drive to Corfe Castle, recalling the last time I was there, when my brother Chris had decided to play hide-and-seek, wedging himself inside a stairwell so we couldn’t find him. Mum had grown hysterical, running around, pleading for help. I’d cried and wet myself, and Dad had finger-whistled as though Chris was a sheepdog, before bellowing his name. When the security guard found him, Chris confessed he’d stayed hidden for so long because we were ‘embarrassing’.

Smiling, I sipped my drink, enjoying the anonymous buzz of conversation around me, and Bing Crosby crooning ‘White Christmas’, and when the window grew too steamy to look through, I pulled my new notepad and a pen from my bag, and placed them on the table.

I thought again about what Craig had written, wondering why neither he nor Ollie had mentioned wanting to interview the neighbours ‘behind closed doors’. Perhaps they hadn’t got round to it; or Craig was planning a spin-off show of his own. How could I ask without outing myself as a snoop?

I pushed up the sleeves of my cardigan and doodled a couple of hearts in the margin of the notepad, and a whiskery cat that might or might not have been Marmite, then idly checked the time. Would Ollie and Craig be awake now, annoyed I’d gone out? Should I have left them alone in my cottage? Not that I had anything worth stealing, even if Ollie hadn’t been the heir to a fortune, and Craig’s camera worth more than anything I owned. I had nothing hidden away that I wouldn’t want them to find, and if either were tempted to rummage through my underwear, they’d be disappointed by my sensible bras and pants. And, considering how helpful they’d been since arriving, the cottage seemed more theirs than mine, anyway.

Impulsively, I accessed the Internet on my phone and tapped The Vampire and Me into a search engine. Once it had loaded, I fast-forwarded the clip until Ollie appeared – and wished I hadn’t. Erin had been right. Ollie was a terrible actor; wooden and stilted, sporting a disastrous moustache and a terrible Irish brogue. None of his natural charm came across, as he and his winsome girlfriend strolled through a night-time city, stalked by a vampire with a Colgate-white complexion and staring eyes.

I shut down the clip as Ollie – or Paddy, as he was unimaginatively named – turned to the vampire and shouted, ‘I know what your game is, sir,’ his accent dipping towards Liverpool.

Evicting the image of his panic-stricken eyes, I forced my attention back to my notepad and, after a moment’s contemplation, wrote: The sight of Carlos in his tight-fitting pants made Jessica’s heart race. I scribbled it out. I wanted to write something a child could pick up, without fear of them seeing a word or sentence their parents would be embarrassed to explain.

Jessica turned to the cameraman, a short, bad-tempered man with a scruffy beard. ‘I don’t think I’m cut out for the show,’ she wept, throwing herself on his mercy. ‘It’s so shallow and unimportant.’

‘Remember, you’re under contract,’ he growled, his eyebrows wriggling like caterpillars across his forehead. Jessica rolled her eyes at him… I had an image of her eyes whizzing like marbles across the floor, and changed it to: Jessica tossed her raven hair back… Ugh. Too soapy.

Maybe I should write about what I knew. Wasn’t that what writing tutors advised? But I didn’t want to write about teaching. My career was forever tainted by the memory of Max’s wife barging into my classroom and shouting at me in front of the children. After she’d flounced out, one child had asked if the ‘nasty witch’ was coming back to put a spell on her, while another demanded to know what a ‘slut’ was.

With a shiver of revulsion, I blinked away the memory and turned to a fresh page. Perhaps a stream of consciousness would get things flowing. I tapped my pen for a minute then, catching the irritated glare of a woman at the next table, started to write: Once upon a time—

‘Hi, Miss Ambrose.’

I looked up to see Alfie Blake hovering by the table in the same baggy suit he’d worn when he showed me around the cottage. ‘You settled in alright, then?’

‘Oh! Yes, it’s lovely, thank you.’ His gaze skittered over the page in front of me and, thankful my writing was too untidy to read, I snapped my notepad shut. ‘I just popped out for a breath of fresh air,’ I felt obliged to explain. ‘But Shipley’s lovely, I really like it here.’

‘Oh?’ He sounded so doubtful, I couldn’t help smiling.

‘It’s honestly not that bad,’ I said. ‘Look at that.’ I gestured towards the view, but the window was still foggy, and all that was visible was a giant penis someone had drawn in the steam, which I hadn’t noticed before. ‘I mean, it’s a very pretty place.’

‘S’alright in the summer, I s’pose.’ His tone was grudgingly polite, and looking more closely I noticed he’d lost the air of enthusiasm he’d had when he took up my challenge to push the house sale through. His shoulders sloped forward, as though weighted down with worry, and his curly hair looked limp.

‘How’s work?’

He rubbed the side of his nose. ‘’S’okay.’

‘Are you on your lunch break?’

Before he could reply there was a kerfuffle, and I looked round to see a pair of youths at the counter, grabbing some cake from beneath a glass dome while the assistant’s back was turned.

‘Oi!’ A customer had clocked what was happening and was rising from his chair, as the beefy boy squashed a wedge of carrot cake into his skinny friend’s spiky hair.

‘You’re such a twat, Biff.’ The boy scraped off the cheesy frosting and smeared it over Biff’s face.

‘DAZ, you absolute pillock.’

‘Language,’ said a woman I recognised as the Harassed Mum from The Christmas Lights Society meeting, with the twins in a double buggy. ‘There are impressionable ears over here, and you’re setting a terrible example.’

The skinny youth had the grace to mumble an apology, but Biff turned on her with a swagger and stuck two fingers up – the effect somewhat spoiled by lumps of cream cheese clinging to his acne.

The door to the kitchen swung open and a man I assumed was the manager emerged. ‘Get yourself back to college before I call the cops,’ he ordered, his face like thunder. ‘And you’re both barred. Again.’

‘Fuck’s sake, Dad.’ Biff deflated like a popped balloon as he reached for a serviette and scrubbed at his face. ‘You can’t bar me. Mum won’t let you and, anyway, we live upstairs.’ Grabbing his friend by the strap of his rucksack, he tugged him towards the door, pausing when he caught sight of Alfie. ‘Ooh, look, Daz, it’s Mr “convenient for local amenities”,’ he said, in a clipped, high-pitched voice.

‘I have to say that, it’s part of my job.’ Alfie’s cheeks glowed red. ‘And I didn’t know you’d only showed up at that flat to take the piss.’

‘As if I could afford to buy it, you knob. I ’aven’t even got a job.’ He caught Daz’s eye and winked. ‘“Easy to maintain, and a great use of space, with plenty of original features”,’ he continued, in the same falsetto, but although Daz smiled, his eyes didn’t join in.

‘Leave ’im alone, Biff.’ He tugged his rucksack free and brushed some of the crumbs out of his hair. ‘Least he’s got a job.’

Biff wrinkled his nose, as if he’d smelt something bad. ‘I’d rather clean toilets wiv my tongue, or be a snot collector than an estate agent,’ he said.

‘Collecting snot’s not a job, you tool.’ Daz’s attempt at bravado fell on deaf ears, as Biff continued to inform Alfie about what he’d rather do than sell houses – including wiping horses’ bottoms, and unblocking sewers with his bare hands – before switching his squinty gaze to me.

‘This your girlfriend, Alfie? Bit old, in’t she?’

‘That’s enough,’ I said sharply. ‘Alfie’s earning a good living, doing something respectable, which is something to be proud of. I suggest you grow up fast, or the only thing you’ll be good for is unblocking sewers with your hands, and then you’ll be laughing on the other side of your face.’ It was the sort of thing my grandmother would have said, but had the effect of wiping the smirk off Biff’s face.

‘Sorry, miss,’ he said, glancing at Daz who looked mortified. ‘No offence, like.’

‘Plenty taken,’ I said. ‘Now, get lost.’

‘You sounded just like my old form tutor, Mrs Latchford, then,’ said Alfie when they’d gone, deliberately leaving the door open so some of the heat rushed out. ‘Biff backs down when someone stands up to him, and she always used to.’

I decided not to reveal that I was, in fact, a teacher (ex-teacher). I didn’t like that I sounded like one outside the classroom, but I supposed it was a habit that was hard to break, and at least it had its uses. ‘You were at the same school?’ I said.

‘Yeah, they were a couple of years below me, but Biff always took the pi— the mickey ’cos of my dad being an estate agent, see, and ’cos I’m working with him now they think it’s hilarious and a bit sad.’

‘Do you think it’s sad?’

‘Not really,’ said Alfie, shifting from foot to foot. ‘I mean, I used to want to be a footballer, but I was cr— rubbish, and I get good commission, plus Dad’s teaching me a lot.’

‘Well, you should be proud then,’ I said.

‘Yeah, but not many kids want to be estate agents, do they?’ My heart melted when I spotted his leather man-bag. He’d been holding it behind his back, presumably to avoid more taunting from Biff and Daz. ‘At school, when they ask what you want to be, you’re supposed to say scientist, or doctor, or something cool.’

‘You’re earning an honest living,’ I persisted, despite having balked at the admin fees I’d paid Blake’s Properties, grumbling to Mum that it was a pity you couldn’t buy a house direct from the owner, without being fleeced by a middle man. ‘It’s a shame so many children want to be famous, instead of becoming plumbers or electricians. Or estate agents.’ An idea unfurled. ‘You should give a talk at the local primary school,’ I said, packing away my notepad and sliding my coat back on. ‘Every month, a parent or relative came to the school where I used to work—’

‘I knew you sounded like a teacher!’

‘—and talked about their job, to inspire the children,’ I continued, deciding to pretend I hadn’t noticed my slip-up. ‘I think it would be a lovely thing to do.’

He chewed his bottom lip, appearing to give it some thought, and I was pleased to see that his skin had resumed its normal, robust shade of pink. ‘How do I go about that, then?’

‘I’m popping over to see Jill Edwards at Nightingale Primary sometime this week,’ I said, to my surprise. ‘I’ll have a word with her, if you like.’