Belinda shrugged. ‘I don’t want to. I’ll miss you all. It’ll be like putting my life here on hold.’

‘Brittany is lovely, especially in the spring,’ Max said. ‘I remember family holidays there growing up. We’ll bring the twins to see you once you’ve sorted the place out.’

Belinda smiled at him. ‘That would be something to look forward to,’ she said. ‘If I go.’

2

Once Christmas and the New Year festivities were over, Belinda tried at every opportunity to get Nigel and Molly to change their minds about her overseeing the rejuvenation of the campsite in Brittany. Both of them insisted, together, and individually when she cornered them separately, that she was the one they wanted to head up the makeover of the campsite and drag it into the twenty-first century. According to them, it was the perfect project for her and they really didn’t understand her reluctance to accept it. They showed her pictures and a short video they’d taken on their phone.

‘It’s got everything families could want for a holiday in unspoilt countryside,’ Nigel said.

Belinda had to agree. The place, with its log cabins scattered higgledy-piggledy around the site rather than in regimented rows and the long low stone building down by the river that served as the restaurant-cum-café for the site, looked to be picturesque, if in need of some tender loving care.

When Nigel insisted she’d have to stay in Finistère for most of the time to oversee the workmen, she had almost resigned.

‘But what about the hotels here? I visit them all at least twice a week. Sometimes more. And the weekly accounts? I know I can do most things remotely, but surely I need to come home at least once every ten days?’

Molly had said she and Nigel would manage everything between them. ‘Be like the old days for us, before you came into our lives.’

Even trying to get Nigel to believe that her French wasn’t good enough didn’t work.

‘You forget I’ve heard you in action with French tourists. Your language skills are better than most and using it every day you’ll soon be word-perfect.’

Her final argument was BB. ‘There is no way I’m leaving BB,’ she said. ‘That is non-negotiable.’

‘Completely understand that,’ Nigel said. ‘Take him. I’ll even pay for his pet passport.’

Belinda sighed, sensing that nothing was going to change their minds and she was limited to the two choices. Go or resign. Neither of which she wanted to do.

Talking to Jane, her best friend, was no help.

‘It’s a challenge,’ Jane said.

‘I like to set my own challenges,’ Belinda said. ‘Besides, there’s a difference between a challenge and an unwanted surprise. And you know how much I hate surprises and change.’ Changes in her life had always tended to be unexpected and more than catastrophic.