Albert looked long and hard into his daughter’s face and saw the lines of strain and the way her mouth tightened with annoyance when things did not go her way. She was only just thirty but could have been forty, and he supposed that all the unhappiness she had gone through must be beginning to show on her face. But for whatever reason he must make it plain to her that she could not rule his life. Since she had left England they had gone their separate ways, and Albert realised that he was very happy with things as they were. To be sure, Janine was the daughter of his beloved Louisa, but he knew that his wife would have applauded his friendship with Edie, would have told Janine unequivocally to leave her father alone. Janine herself had made the decision to return to England, so she must start to build a new life for herself and not try to interfere with Albert’s.

As Janine rose from the table he tried to say something of this, but she brushed him aside. ‘Don’t wake me tomorrow morning; I’ll get up late,’ she said. ‘I shall need some time to recover from the journey before I can start to sort out what’s best to do.’ She turned away from him, began to open the door which led into the small hallway, then turned back. ‘It’s all your fault, Dad,’ she said pettishly. ‘If only you’d told me that you’d given up the idea of the ice cream parlour we wouldn’t be in the mess we are now. I might not even have come home, because I could have got work in New York. Or there was a young fellow working in the candy store not two minutes’ walk from the soda fountain . . .’

Albert recognised that Janine was just trying to blame others for a fiasco which had been, in truth, all of her own making. If she had only read his letters properly disaster might have been averted, though of course it wouldn’t have helped what must have been an extremely rocky marriage, nor have reversed her non-existent ownership of the soda fountain. She had boasted of her business acumen, but if she had really possessed such a thing she would have made certain that the soda fountain had truly become her own property and not relied on the word of an unscrupulous man.

But Janine was yawning. ‘Well, I’m here now, and I mean to make the best of it. Tell you what, I’ll come down between ten and eleven tomorrow morning and you can shut up shop for an hour or so and take me round to meet this Mrs Williams and her granddaughter. What did you say her name was?’

Abruptly, Albert remembered all that had happened during the course of the previous week. ‘Her name is Tess, but you won’t be able to meet her for several days,’ he informed his daughter. ‘She’s gone to a ruby wedding in Norfolk. As for shutting the shop, that won’t be necessary since I’ve arranged for Mr Clarke to come here whilst Tess is away so that I can give Mrs Williams a hand.’ He cast his daughter a quizzical look. ‘If you’d read my letters you’d know that Mrs Williams was quite badly injured in a coach accident.’