Cover

Also by Jenny Bayliss

The Twelve Dates of Christmas

Dedication

For Aileen
with all my love x

Chapter 1

Annie was almost home when she realized she’d left her phone at the restaurant. The September evening air was nipping at her jacket collar, letting her know that summer was on the wane. The gentle rhythm of her rubber-soled boots on the pavement was as soothing as the tick of the old carriage clock that used to sit on her parents’ mantelpiece.

The high street was quiet. The pubs had long since expelled their patrons, and the lights in the flats above the shops were all but extinguished. Even a town as busy as Leaming on the Lye had to sleep sometime. Annie wandered slowly back the way she had come. She was completely alone aside from the flash of a bushy red tail as a fox disappeared down an alleyway, no doubt hoping to find a loose bin bag or discarded kebab.

Annie liked this time of day. After the heat and rush of the kitchen during service and then the laborious cleardown, when the last customers departed, full bellied and ruddy cheeked from the house wine, came the quiet. The front-of-house staff left first, carpets hoovered and tables laid ready for lunch service the next day, leaving just the kitchen staff, tired yet strangely elated at having got through another crazy night. When the last pan was dried and the floor mopped, Annie would let them go, listening as their animated conversations drifted out of the courtyard and into the sleeping streets beyond. Since the twins had left home, her chefs had become like her surrogate children. And then she was alone. The calm after another hard-won day washed over her. She was too tired to dwell, which was just the way she liked it.

Up ahead, toward the mall, a man in a leather jacket staggered under the weight of his companion, who leaned listlessly against him, drunkenly singing “Hit me baby one more time.” Annie walked on and soon she was standing back outside the Pomegranate Seed, the restaurant she and her husband, Max—Leaming on the Lye’s answer to Don Juan—had run for the last fifteen years.

Annie unhooked the latch on a tall gate to the side of the building. A steep path led down toward a small courtyard and kitchen garden, with raised beds and cold frames to the right, and to the left, a crooked flight of stone steps down to the kitchen door.

The security light was on the blink again so the graveled passage was in almost complete darkness, save for the dim phosphorescence of the harvest moon. But it didn’t trouble Annie; she knew every dip in the path, every leaning nuance of the ancient steps—this was her domain.