Olivia slammed her foot on the brake as she rounded the bend, punching the horn in alarm. What the hell . . . ? There was a girl on a bike right in the middle of the road, so close Olivia could see the whites of her eyes, the sudden panic on her face. Time seemed to slow down, but the car wasn’t slowing fast enough. Could she swerve away? She was going to hit her. She was going to hit her!

Chapter Fifteen

All okay? Ring me if you want a chat, any time. I’ll keep my phone next to me in bed just in case.

Morning! Hope you slept well. Thinking about you. Hope you’re having fun!

How’s it going? Let me know if you want me to pick you up earlier. Miss you. xx

Maggie’s unanswered texts were piling up in her phone like litter on a beach. Every time she glanced over and saw that there was still no message of reply, it felt like a rebuff. What did it mean? Was Amelia having such a wonderful time with Will that she didn’t have a spare minute to glance at her in-box? Or was she desperately miserable, but too proud to say anything?

More than once her finger had hovered above the Call key, only for her to wrench it away again. Amelia seemed to resent her mother full stop these days and would almost certainly resent any intrusion into her Newton Abbot stay, however desperate Maggie was to hear from her. Oh God, how she wished this wasn’t happening. Why had she allowed herself to be bulldozed into the situation, without more of a fight?

After leaving Amelia there in Devon yesterday, Maggie had driven away, feeling untethered, unhinged, as if she no longer knew the rules. She felt like weeping with the stress of what had just happened, especially when she passed a trampoline park and imagined the children inside bouncing wild and free, their hair spraying out around them, the shrieks, the laughter. Amelia used to love trampolining, she remembered with a pang. So did she herself, for that matter. They’d had a trampoline in their garden until a few years ago, and they’d ended up bouncing on there together many times. ‘It’s hard for the only ones, when they don’t have brothers or sisters, isn’t it?’ her neighbour Tina had once said sorrowfully, peering over the fence at them. Maggie had felt so winded by this not-so-subtle jibe that she had bounced to a sudden halt and almost broken her knees.