A happier, though unlikely, romance did, however, come to fruition. It was announced in the September edition of The Hut Parade (with complimentary tide table for new members of the SBHA) that Reginald Flowers had married Dora Pinchbeck. So now he could dictate to her whenever he wanted to and she could polish his brass fittings.
Not a lot changed with the other members of the Smalting Beach Hut Association. Deborah Wrigley continued to use Seagull's Nest as just another chamber in which to torture her family.
And in Shrimphaven Katie Brunswick continued endlessly to rewrite her novel (except of course when she was off on courses instructing her about different ways of rewriting it).
Meanwhile up on the Smalting prom at Sanditon Helga Czesky continued to indulge her husband's middle-aged enfant terriblisme. And Gray Czesky, cushioned by his wife's substantial tolerance and substantial income, still didn't realize how lucky he was and would still maunder on to anyone foolish enough to listen about his world-shattering plans to épater le bourgeois. (The local bourgeois, it should be noted, remained remarkably unaware of and uninterested in his efforts to épate them.)
After his grandfather's suicide the police closed the case of Robin Cutter. He was found by an inquest to have died of accidental drowning. His grandmother still used Mistral a lot, still always had a wordsearch book with her, but she now spent a lot of time, as her late husband had done, just looking bleakly out to sea.
There was never any thought of a rapprochement between Joyce Oliver and her daughter-in-law. Miranda Browning perhaps received some comfort from the discovery that her son had not been the victim of a paedophile, but the sense of loss remained ever present in her life. As it did in the life of her divorced husband Rory.
For the inhabitants of High Tor and Woodside Cottage everything continued much as before. Jude was occasionally restless, feeling that perhaps it was time for her to move on from Fethering, but she didn't confide these thoughts in her neighbour. Carole Seddon could always find sufficient imagined slights in her life, without being given any real ones to worry about.
And the general view in Fethering remained that the people in Smalting were a bit up themselves.