She sighed and reached for a sponge, absently rubbing it down her pale, slightly freckled arms. Of course, she knew why he might have felt reluctant to ask her before now. Her children, the scamps, were at times barely civil to him. But they were teenagers still, as she’d pointed out to him time and time again, and everyone knew that teenagers could be a bit emotional and trying. They would change once they’d had their twentieth birthday and began to act like grown-ups. And if they didn’t … well, indulgent mother though she usually was, she knew how to put her foot down if she really needed to, Millie thought, with a tightening of her lips and giving a cross little shrug.

No matter what, she wouldn’t let them spoil things for her tonight. They would just have to be made to understand that, whilst they had been her whole life, especially since George had passed away, they couldn’t be the centre of her universe forever. Soon they would marry themselves, and move away, and she would need someone in her life. Did they expect her to be lonely forever? she would demand of them. Well, did they?

For once, she would put herself first. No matter what anyone thought. And her snide friends could go hang as well! She gave a gurgle of delight at the thought of Frances’s face when she flashed her new engagement ring at their next lunch at the Randolph!

With a smile, Millie Vander leaned her head back against the rim of the tub, and sighed.

Tonight was going to be magical. She was going to make sure of it.

Chapter 3

The first guests for Mrs Millicent Vander’s New Year’s Eve party arrived at her door promptly at eight o’clock.

Millie didn’t mind. It would never have occurred to either of the Wainwrights to be fashionably late, and she’d been prepared for that. They’d been her next-door neighbours for all her married life, and she knew their little ways. Not the most sophisticated of people, either of them, but you couldn’t have a party and not invite your immediate neighbours, could you? It wasn’t polite.

She showed them straight into the large living room, where tables groaned with food. There, she poured Mary her favourite ‘snowball’ – inwardly wondering how anyone could actually like advocaat – whilst merely drifting a hand towards the help-yourself bar rife with spirits, indicating that Mary’s husband was to pour his own. William, like George, preferred brandy or cognac to mixed drinks – and like George, he liked to pour his own measures. George had always thought she’d never realised how much he consumed that way! Bless him.