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‘Tell me I’m seeing things.’

Mia, who’d spoken, didn’t look round as her sister, Lottie, came quietly into the room behind her. Her eyes remained fixed on the mystery of what she was studying through the picture window of their hilltop home. Rented for the summer season.

Amused, perhaps a little irritated, by the way Mia was peering around a curtain as if afraid of being seen – it would have to be by a bird, or a paraglider or someone hanging upside down from the roof to get eyes on her here – Lottie took centre stage to investigate the focus of interest.

‘Where are you looking?’ she asked, searching the sunlit slopes of lush green fields that rolled from their outside terrace down to the scrubby beach below.

‘You’ll see,’ Mia said softly.

Lottie already had and as her heart slowed with surprise she blinked uncomprehendingly at the sight of a small child in a blue anorak and yellow wellie boots sitting all alone on the gritty sand. Her back was turned so they couldn’t see her face – she was too far away for it to be more than a blur anyway – and her white blonde curls were being tossed about in the breeze. Her tiny hands looked to be clutching her knees.

What on earth was she doing there all alone? That was how it appeared. And what could she be staring at? There was nothing to see apart from the churning might of the Severn Estuary and mountainous terrain of South Wales on the horizon.

Had someone gone into the water and not come out again?

There seemed no panic in the child, so presumably not that.

‘How did she get there?’ Mia asked, almost peevishly, as if someone might be playing a trick that she couldn’t quite get a handle on.

Lottie looked up and down the coast as far as she could see. There was no one else in sight, no parent or fishing boat, no sign at all of how the child might have got to the bottom of their hill and onto that godforsaken stretch of stony shoreline. It was as if she’d been washed up by the waves and simply left there like flotsam – or some kind of offering?

Mia would like that.

So would Lottie, although maybe for different reasons.

Of course, the child must have walked, it was the only way, but she was surely no older than two so she couldn’t have done it alone.

‘Her mother, or someone, must be nearby,’ Lottie said, ‘we just can’t see them from here.’

They continued to watch and wait.

Eventually, the little girl stood up – she really was tiny. She turned towards the long grass that swept up the far side of the field towards a small spur of a track that wound on up to the South West Coast Path. There was a stile, not visible from the sisters’ window, where the occasional hiker or rock pool explorer could gain access to this remote, rather dismal bay. Lottie expected the child to wave, and maybe start running to someone coming her way – a parent who would appear from the wings any second to scoop her up and carry her away.

No one came, and after a few stumbling steps the child sat down again, her back still turned. This time her tiny hands seemed to be covering her face.

Mia’s deep brown eyes moved to meet Lottie’s.

Both women were in their mid-forties, their birthdays just a year apart, Mia – Emilia – being the eldest. Both were tall and slender, with a regal sort of bearing. There the similarities ended. Mia was brown-haired and pale complexioned, with a slightly too prominent jaw and close-set eyes. Lottie – Carlotta – with her lustrous dark curls and fine-boned features, was often described as a beauty.

‘She can’t be alone,’ Mia said, disbelievingly.

Lottie continued to watch and wait. This was all wrong, a tiny speck of humanity alongside a vast, amorphous sea with no one to mind her. It was making her heart thud with unease, and stir with a sense of protectiveness – something she instinctively felt towards children, in spite of having none of her own.

‘It’s starting to rain,’ Mia said, noticing a gauzy mist drifting like a veil across the landscape. There was a small crease between her brows as she created all manner of scenarios to fit the tableau of small child seemingly abandoned on a beach.

Lottie didn’t answer, simply dug her feet into a pair of old hiking boots and tied the laces.

Mia said, cautiously, ‘Edwin won’t like it.’

Lottie regarded her sister in scornful dismay. Her tone was cool as she said, ‘Your husband isn’t here.’

Mia flushed and seeing how much she’d hurt her Lottie was momentarily torn between contrition and an urge to slap her.

Pulling open the door she paused and turned back. ‘She’s probably too young for tea,’ she said, ‘so heat up some milk,’ and stepping out into a lively gust, she crossed the terrace to begin the descent to the beach. It wouldn’t matter, she told herself, if someone showed up when she got to the child and told her to mind her own business. She didn’t mean any harm, and besides, if anyone should be indignant about the situation it ought to be her. After all, what right-thinking person allowed a little mite like that to venture close to the sea on her own, even if the tide wasn’t likely to come in any further today? All she, Lottie Winters, wanted was to make sure the child was in no danger then she’d go happily on her way. Well, maybe not happily, for her curiosity would want to be satisfied by the reason the girl had come to be there in the first place.

As she strode effortlessly down the hillside she could feel Mia’s eyes boring into her back, and could actually sense her unease. It wouldn’t be so much about the mission Lottie was bent on, although that would be a part. It would be all tied up in Mia’s constant fear of what she’d do if Lottie ever found a husband of her own – someone whose need of Lottie, whose right to her time and devotion, would necessarily trump Mia’s own.

Lottie was, according to most, beautiful, exotic, adventurous, desired by many men and yet, over the years, she’d spurned them all to remain free, answerable to no one but herself. Should that ever change Lottie knew Mia would do her very best to be happy for her. She often said that no one deserved love more than Lottie, but how would she, Mia, fill the gaps, the veritable chasms, that would open up if Lottie wasn’t there any more?

Poor Mia. She’d never been good at making friends, the way that came so naturally to Lottie. She was too shy to travel alone, something Lottie did often. And she was too cautious to take risks, especially the kind that drove Lottie to help those in perilous states of fear and destitution around the world. She was, she knew, too independent, too wayward and strong-minded to bend to any man’s will and in the end most men didn’t like that.

‘You’re as bad as Mummy,’ she’d grumble whenever Mia loyally, if not convincingly, echoed their mother, ‘thinking, no believing, that no woman is complete without a husband. Do I look unfinished to you? Do I behave as though half of me isn’t functioning? I have sex when I want it, thank you very much, good male friends who spoil me and demand nothing in return, so why would I want to saddle myself with the burden of having to please someone else when it’s so much more fun pleasing me?’

She wasn’t that selfish really, or not all of the time, and as frustrated as she often felt with Mia, she was ready to accept that they were as close as sisters could be, and, to a certain degree, quite interdependent. Their inherited fortune was shared as were their lives, 24/7, when Lottie wasn’t travelling. In fact, they were so attuned to one another’s thoughts and so exclusively in their own world at times that Edwin had once described them as each other’s oxygen – and he hadn’t meant it in a kind way.

By now Lottie had reached a small gap in the hedge at the bottom of their field where the air was saltier and more bracing and the noise of the tide almost drowned the gulls. She pushed on across the gritty sand towards the water’s edge still not entirely certain what she was about to do, and still expecting someone to appear from behind the dyke to whisk the child away.

No one did, and as she came to a stop beside the tiny creature her heart caught on a great wave of feeling. The tiny, damp face tilted up to look at her, big brown eyes swimming in tears and hair plastered to her mottled cheeks. She was as pretty, and as tragic, a picture as Lottie had ever seen. She was trembling and frightened – and clearly lost.

Sinking down to the girl’s height, Lottie said, ‘What are you doing out here on your own? Is someone with you?’

The child only stared at her.

Lottie looked over her shoulder, up and down the coast and even out to sea, but there was no one in sight.

When she turned back the girl was still watching her, lips quivering, eyes timid and tearful. Instinctively Lottie drew her into her arms and felt the pleasing heft of her as she filled the space meant for a child. ‘There, there,’ she soothed, stroking the wet hair and feeling a surge of protectiveness wrap itself around the girl’s loneliness and fragility. ‘It’s all right. I’m going to take care of you.’

The child didn’t pull away, simply rested her sweet little head against Lottie’s shoulder.

‘What’s your name?’ Lottie asked in her ear. Not receiving an answer, she drew back to look at her again. ‘Where’s your mummy?’ she asked softly.

Two small tears dropped from the girl’s eyes.

‘Did she bring you here?’

No answer.

‘Do you know where you live?’

The little girl sucked her lower lip between tiny white teeth.

Lottie glanced up at the house, already knowing she was going to take the child there – what else could she do? Leaving her here simply wasn’t an option and it was a long way into town. To her surprise she saw that Mia was outside, on the terrace and frantically waving. Was she trying to warn her of something? What was she saying? Lottie looked around, but there was still no one to be seen.

‘We’re going to sort this out,’ she told the little girl, and taking her tiny hand she led her across the beach to begin the climb up the hill.

It was too hard going for such small legs, so she scooped her up and carried her the rest of the way. How many children had she carried to safety in her time, she wondered. Certainly hundreds, but numbers hardly mattered. Each wretched little soul was as special as the next, as worthy as those who’d gone before and still others yet to come.

Mia met them beneath the terrace and quickly took the child into her waiting arms.

‘She’s so lovely,’ she crooned, stroking the girl’s drizzle-soaked cheek with the back of one hand. ‘So sweet and tiny. What’s her name?’

‘I don’t know,’ Lottie replied. ‘Why were you waving?’

Starting, as if suddenly remembering, Mia said, ‘Someone was there. Not far from the stile. They were watching you, but when you picked her up they turned and ran away.’

Lottie looked towards the stile, barely visible through the overhang of trees and tangle of bushes. ‘Male or female?’ she asked, unable to make sense of anything.

‘Hard to be certain at this distance.’ Mia was already carrying the girl onto the terrace. ‘They were wearing a hooded jacket.’

‘Maybe I should pop out to the lane to see if anyone’s still there?’ Lottie said.

Mia nodded, distracted now by her need to dry the child and make her feel safe. Once inside the kitchen she set her down and dropped to her knees in front of her. ‘Are you OK?’ she whispered softly.

The girl’s eyes welled with tears.

‘There, there, sweetheart,’ Mia soothed, wanting to smother her in an embrace, but afraid it might scare her. ‘No need to cry. We’ve got some lovely milk to warm you up, and …’ her eyes brightened playfully, ‘a delicious homemade cookie.’

Ten minutes later, Lottie returned to find Mia sitting in a cosy armchair with the child on her lap, a half-drunk glass of milk and partly eaten cookie on a small table beside them.

‘No sign of anyone,’ Lottie said, peeling off her coat. ‘I don’t understand it. Why would—’

‘There’s a note,’ Mia interrupted. ‘There. On the table.’

Lottie glanced at it, then back to Mia as if she might explain further.

‘It was in her coat pocket,’ Mia said softly.

Lottie picked it up and as she absorbed the words she felt the strangest confliction of feelings coming to life inside her.

Her name is Sasha. She will be two years old on May 14th. I know you are good people. Please take care of her until I can come back for her.