Not like me. I’d had grand plans once upon a time. I even left home for a year to take up a place at university to study Media. Then Mum had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and my degree went out of the window. I came home to help Dad look after her and six months later she passed away. Evie tried to persuade me go back to uni. I was only twenty, it wasn’t too late and it would open doors, she’d said, give me independence, a future. Three years older than me, she’d already finished her degree and had got a good job as an accountant in Manchester. But for me the moment had passed. I’d changed. Everything had changed. Spending three years with a load of carefree twenty-somethings whose biggest dilemma was which pub sold the cheapest drinks no longer held any appeal. I’d lost my mum and somewhere during the last few months of her life I’d lost my way too. Mum had been the sunshine in our lives and she and Dad had been blessed with one of those fairy-tale marriages which no one in their company could fail to be touched by. He called her ‘blossom’ and brought her a tea tray complete with her favourite china cup and a fresh flower in bed before he left for work each morning. She tucked paper hearts and love notes in his lunchbox and told him every day that he was her soulmate. If I could have even a fraction of their happiness when I eventually married, I’d vowed long ago, I’d be a happy, happy woman.

Immediately following Mum’s funeral, Dad took early retirement from the fire service and I spent the next year trying to coax him out of the house. In the end, a friend begged him to help him get rid of a tree which had come down blocking his drive. To my relief, Dad found he quite enjoyed being active again. A month later Allbright’s Tree Services was born. Dad took a course and obtained his chainsaw licence and, because I had nothing better to do, I became his assistant. All those years of climbing trees and making dens finally paid off. I became a dab hand with the shiny new shredder too, making bark chippings from the chopped-down branches, which we sold for ten pounds a sack.