‘Hi, Mummy!’ said Helena quietly as she let herself in through the back door and Gilly’s heart sank. Helena hadn’t called her ‘Mummy’ since she was in primary school: there was definitely something wrong.

‘What’s up?’ said Gilly. She watched as her daughter tried to pretend there wasn’t anything but she’d always been an awful liar.

‘Let’s have lunch first,’ said Helena, taking a cheese scone from the cooling rack and breaking off a bit. ‘I’m starving!’

‘OK,’ said Gilly, ‘but promise me it’s nothing health-related, or something really ghastly.’

‘Nothing health-related,’ Helena said quickly. ‘Let’s have lunch.’

Gilly found bowls, plates and knives and put them on the table. The butter was already there. ‘Do you want a sandwich or will the scones do?’

‘They’re my favourite! Of course they’ll do.’

Gilly relaxed a bit. But as Helena sipped the soup Gilly noticed she was only nibbling her scone and was spending quite a lot of time fiddling with her knife, slicing off slivers of butter; she wasn’t actually eating much.

‘What’s wrong, darling?’ Gilly said. ‘I wish you’d tell me. Have you broken up with Jago?’

Helena put down her spoon. ‘Jago and I are just friends, Mum.’

‘So what is it?’ Seeing the anguish on her daughter’s face was killing her.

‘Mum, it’s about Leo.’

‘Leo?’ This was the last thing Gilly would have thought of. ‘What about him?’

‘It’s not easy to say.’

‘Oh, please, Helly! Just tell me! If it’s not health-related what on earth can it be?’ The thought that Leo might turn out to be married with a family did now cross her mind. ‘Is he married?’

‘OK, Mum. Do you remember that time we were going to visit Martin at uni and there was a car on the wrong side of the road, coming at us full pelt, and you had to swerve into the ditch to stop us getting killed?’

Gilly thought, then nodded. ‘Yes. It was terrifying. And afterwards I never thought I’d get the car out of the ditch.’

‘Leo was driving the car.’

‘What do you mean? How can you possibly know?’ Then Gilly began to realise what had happened. ‘You recognised him?’

‘As soon as I saw him, when we all had lunch. I got a very good look at him at the time of the accident.’

Gilly had never known Helena to be wrong about things like this. If she said someone was whoever she said it was, it was them. One hundred per cent. ‘So why wait until now to tell me?’

‘Because I wanted to find out more about it. He may well have been taking a sick child to hospital.’

‘We would have seen if there’d been a child in the back of the car.’