When, a few years ago now, we bought our little house on the Suffolk coast – our second home, our sea house, my dream house – it was, my husband said, on one condition. We had to let it out as much as we could when we weren’t there. First, it was the only way we were going to be able to justify (or pay for) it, financially. But there was also a second reason – environmental, social, human. There’s just something so deeply unattractive about a second home standing there empty for so many weeks of the year, he said.

Not just empty but dark, too. In summer you don’t really notice it. The little town on whose sea-swept edge it stands is full of people, bursting with life – and so, mostly, is the house.