Mr. Parfitt’s remedy for everything was bread. When Rebecca returned home he recommended a warm baguette. He would note the bread that his customers preferred, for these choices were his way of reading a customer’s character.

Mrs. Seymour, for example, liked a small wholemeal cob. One was delivered every Friday morning. Mr. Parfittt would give the crusty surface a squeeze to ensure it had the perfect feel. He could judge such things by a lifetime’s relationship with bread. Mrs. Seymour’s cob had to be firm but not heavy. There was to be a delicacy appropriate to a lady so charming, so understanding and so wise.

Those evenings with the cards remained in the foreground of Mr. Parfitt’s memory. In despair he had turned to her. And she, with admirable discretion, had offered him the reassurance and the hope he could not find elsewhere. Others could give consolation, but Mrs. Seymour spoke of things she alone could see. She had shown him a door he might open any time he wished.

He had sent her gifts, although none were ever acknowledged: a silk scarf, a pearl necklace, and many flowers. Mrs. Seymour’s weekly order of a wholemeal cob did not stop, but Mr. Parfitt never saw her again.

Others could give consolation, but Mrs. Seymour spoke of things she alone could see. She had shown him a door he might open any time he wished.

The girls noticed a sadness in the old man’s eyes at times. They supposed he had been cast under the witch’s spell. Only love could free him from its curse. That girl, Rebecca, had been lucky to escape. Somehow she had found a way out of the woods before it was too late. Mr. Parfitt, however, was under a deeper spell.

“Take care in calm water,” Mrs. Seymour had warned. Mr. Parfitt thought he understood her metaphor. There are always in situations when everything seems to be going well. That girl, for example, the teenager who disappeared: he’d seen her in the woods with a boy on more than one occasion. He guessed where she was when she disappeared. But he said nothing to anyone. In the event of her naked body being found the elderly single man who knew too much would be questioned. Who would believe him? Mrs. Seymour, surely. And who would believe her?

The old witch, who indeed would believe her? Mr. Parfitt had heard children talking of her, whispering in his bakery. Those girls, the new family. Nice girls, so trim in their cotton summer dresses. He’d heard their giggles. He always pretended not to hear. He tried to pay no attention, for they were young and playful. They weren’t serious, were they, about the wise woman whom he loved? They thought the sea was perpetually calm.

From the attic window Sarah, alone, watched Mrs. Seymour walk, not to the bakery, nor to the woods, but toward the harbour. The sirens had sounded for the lifeboat crew to assemble.