“Oh dear. So now he knows she is here. Well, presumably you asked him not to say anything to anyone. Is that what is wrong? You’re worried he might tell someone Nicole is hiding out with you?” She didn’t see how that worry could have caused Milly to look as if her world had ended.

“That’s not what’s wrong.” Milly blew her nose again. “There’s something I haven’t told you. About Nicole.” She scrunched the tissue into a ball. “We had a sort of blip in our friendship. We lost touch for eighteen months.”

Whatever Connie had been expecting to hear, it wasn’t that.

The two girls had always been such good friends. Inseparable, she’d thought. She’d honestly believed that nothing would ever come between them. There had even been occasions when she’d envied their friendship and wished she could have found something similar in her own life. She had friends, of course, plenty of friends, but nothing that came close to the bond that Milly and Nicole shared.

“When I say we lost touch, what I really mean is she ghosted me.” Milly slumped over the table, the misery rolling off her in waves. “She didn’t answer my calls or messages. From the moment I mentioned that Richard had walked out and that he was having an affair, she stopped responding. We have been there for each other through thick and thin, and then I hit the lowest point of my life and she wasn’t there for me.”

And Connie knew how that would have made Milly feel.

She put her arm around her daughter.

“I had no idea. I assumed the two of you were talking all the time.” And she couldn’t begin to imagine why Nicole would have done that. It didn’t make sense to her. But it helped to explain why Milly had leaned on her so heavily since Richard had left. She hadn’t had her friend supporting her. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t want you to worry. And I didn’t understand it. I didn’t know what I’d done wrong. And then out of the blue she called and begged me to let her stay for a while so I said yes—” Milly sniffed and pulled another tissue from the box.

“Because you have a long and wonderful friendship that is worth hanging on to.”

“Maybe. Or maybe I’m just an idiot.” She took a shuddering breath. “But tonight, finally, I found out why she’d ghosted me. It wasn’t that she was too busy or just wrapped up in her own life. It was all to do with Richard. The moment he saw her he went ballistic.” Milly related what had happened, and Connie listened, trying to mask her own reaction.

“So Nicole overheard his conversation with Avery?”