They sat in silence while Tara struggled with herself. Eventually she managed a croaky, ‘Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome.’ Keith rubbed his hands together. ‘Have you eaten? Shall we find somewhere for a snack?’

‘Can we just go home?’

‘Of course,’ he said, then added, ‘I seem to remember there’s a certain drive-through McDonald’s where we might be—’

‘Don’t push it,’ said Tara. ‘I might be getting driven home by my dad but I’m not eight.’ And she slid down the seat and folded her arms.

As the motorway miles passed under her listless gaze, Tara tried to analyse how she felt. The guilty weight pressing down on her shoulders had gone but there was a new hollowness spreading through her chest, and not even the knowledge that she’d done the right thing made it any better.

No more Phil. No more midnight phone calls, no more spontaneous sexy weekends away, no more fun, no more flattering moments of feeling more interesting than she really was.

Just flood damage and depressed clients and bills and the probate nightmare still to sort out.

He preferred someone else to me, she thought, twisting the knife. I wasn’t enough.

Keith didn’t try to instigate conversation. He was humming along enthusiastically, if not quite in tune, to a song by The Cure, and it dislodged a memory from a deep part of Tara’s brain. A car journey on a summer evening, that fresh new-car smell of Dad’s silver Saab, mint-green Clarks sandals tinged with rusty blood where they’d rubbed her heels raw, squabbling with Toby in the back seat, then snoozing, then half waking up to Toby snoring and Mum and Dad singing in the front to Spandau Ballet, and a feeling of absolute security that covered her like a blanket as the car sped home to their warm house and waiting dog. Safety. Love. Completeness.

She didn’t know where the memory had come from, but Tara reached out not for the lost family, but for that feeling of everything in the world making sense and requiring nothing from her. It was such a comforting memory that, without warning, she slipped into sleep.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The positive response Tara had had from her kitchen noticeboard plea for help with the flood counselling went some way to restoring her dented faith in human nature. Rather than offering hazel twigs to heal the damp, the counsellors had come up with some genuinely helpful sessions.