The sand was coarse, Sandra felt each shard dig into her skin, like a thousand tiny knives.

Sand was glass, wasn’t it? She’d read that somewhere. Mostly likely one of Tony’s wildlife magazines, he was forever clogging the house with the flimsy things. Sandra had told him to keep them in the bathroom, at least then they’d be of some use. Now, newspapers. Those were much more reputable. Shame she couldn’t seem to find any here.

“The end of the bloody world,” she muttered, smoothing a patch of sand with the back of her hand, cursing when she felt the grains catch under her acrylic nails.

This trip - and trip was far too generous a word for it - had been another one of Tony’s hair-brained schemes.

“It’s a guaranteed return, babe,” he’d promised, planting a wet kiss to her temple at the kitchen table that morning, “we buy the beach hut super cheap, slap some paint on and boom!”

“Boom,” Sandra whispered to herself, “everything up in smoke.”

Quite literally, as it turned out.

When their battered Ford Fiesta had juddered to a stop in the quiet seaside town, they’d wandered towards the seafront only to discover their most recent purchase a towering inferno.

Tony had left her her. To “watch over the crime scene, babe.” And, not knowing what else to do, Sandra had sat on the nearest dune and hadn’t moved since.

It was peaceful here, if you could forgive the crackle of burning wood. The only other sound the gentle sloshing of the sea. Sandra couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this peaceful.

If only the damn sand would behave.