The Isles of Scilly are one of my favourite places in the world – not that I’ve travelled that much of the world but I’ve been lucky enough to visit a few locations renowned for their stunning coastlines, including Grenada, St Lucia, Sardinia, Corsica and Southern Australia. There are some beautiful beaches in all of these places but I think the white sands and jewel-like seas of St Mary’s, St Martin’s, St Agnes, Tresco and Bryher are equally, if not more, breathtaking than any of those exotic hotspots.

From the moment I first glimpsed Scilly from a tiny Skybus aircraft in September 2014, I was smitten. From the air, the isles look like a necklace of emerald gems fringed by sparkling sands, set in a turquoise, jade and sapphire lagoon. (Just remember that we’re in the chilly Atlantic, thirty miles west of Cornwall and that it can rain and the fog can roll in. Take your wellies, walking boots and umbrella as well as your bikini!)

Within half an hour of setting foot on the ‘Main Island’, St Mary’s, I knew that one day I had to set a novel there. However, if you go looking for Gull Island, St Piran’s, St Saviour’s, Petroc or any of the people, pubs or businesses featured in this series, I’m afraid you won’t find them. They’re all products of my imagination. While I’ve set some of the scenes on St Mary’s, almost all of the organisations mentioned in the series are completely fictional and I’ve had to change aspects of the ‘real’ Scilly to suit my stories.

On saying that, if you visit Scilly I hope you will find stunning landscapes, welcoming pubs and cafés, pretty flower farms and warm, hardworking communities very like the ones you’ll read about in these books. I’ll leave it to you, the reader, to decide where Scilly ends and the Little Cornish Isles begin.

Phillipa x

Prologue

18 October

Maisie Samson was the only living soul on Gull Island. At least, that’s how it felt as she padded over the sand towards the silver-smooth waters of the Petroc channel that morning. Behind her, the Driftwood Inn basked in the first rays of autumn sunlight at the top of the beach. The rising sun brought out the pink in the granite walls of the pub that Maisie had returned home to eight months previously.

A cormorant dried its wings on a sandbar in the middle of the narrow channel that separated Gull Island from its neighbour, Petroc Island. Rubbing her arms to warm herself, Maisie picked her way between the bleached sticks of driftwood that gave the inn its name. In the damp sand, tiny shells glimmered in the sunlight, uncovered by the retreating tide.

Letting the chilly wavelets nibble at her toes, she turned back to look at the inn. The curtains were still drawn in the windows of the flat over the pub. Last night, the bar was rocking with a folk band, and Ray and Hazel Samson were having a well-earned lie-in.

Despite falling into her bed at half-past midnight, Maisie had woken early and decided to go for a swim while she had the beach to herself. Hers were the only footprints leading down the beach and probably the first ones to be made on any beach on the whole of Gull Island today. That was something, wasn’t it? To be alone for a few minutes in a busy overcrowded world? No matter what had happened over the past year, she wouldn’t swap places with anyone this morning.

She poked a toe into the water, took a deep breath and waded in, huffing and cursing. The sea might look like the Caribbean, but this was still the Atlantic. Ignoring the chilly bite of water at her waist, Maisie took a deep breath, splashed water over herself. Bloody hell …

One. Two. Three.

Argh. She couldn’t feel her fingers or toes. Oh God, why did she do this? And why was it always so much colder than she expected?

As the initial shock subsided, Maisie switched from a frantic doggy paddle to a steady breaststroke. She didn’t bother with goggles; she was no Rebecca Adlington, and goggles would have defeated the object of her swim, which was to take in her surroundings. To have a few precious moments of peace before a frantic Saturday running the Driftwood.

It was hard to believe that Christmas was only two months away. How different this one would be: the first in eight years that she’d spend with her family. Relatively relaxed compared

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