Maggie blinked away her doom-laden thoughts and smiled brightly. ‘Absolutely fine,’ she said, starting the engine and carefully pulling out of her parking space. Tara might have taken Amelia by the hand lately and led her down a terrible new path of alcopops, short skirts and sarcasm, but Maggie was determined to win her back over the next two weeks, or at least die trying. The bond between them would be repaired, made good as new. ‘Cornwall here we come!’ she cried, with all the valour of King Arthur himself.

Chapter Three

There was something about going on holiday, Em thought, unpacking provisions in Briar Cottage’s kitchen, that allowed you to reinvent yourself, just for two weeks at a time. You could snip yourself out of your usual real-life frieze like a paper doll and position yourself in new, exotic surroundings. With a bit of luck you might even become a new, exotic person in the process. It was a beguiling thought.

Not that all of her holidays in the past had been exotic occasions, obviously. Her childhood holidays had been a succession of damp and drizzly campsites, all welly boots, tinned meatballs and petty squabbles. She could picture her mum now, wearing two jumpers and an anorak on the beach, pouring coffee from a Thermos flask with a rigid jaw as the clouds huddled threateningly in the sky. The gritty texture of sand at the bottom of a sleeping bag. Vanilla ice-cream dribbling stickily down a cone onto her fingers.

The holidays she’d spent as a teenager were best forgotten, frankly, especially the summer they’d camped at the Gower when she was fifteen. The tent had leaked and she’d had back-to-back arguments with her parents, including one particularly explosive row over the wearing (or the non-wearing, rather) of her hated orange cagoule in a freezing downpour. ‘I’d sooner catch pneumonia and die’ had been her passionate, if grandiose declaration. ‘At least that would give us all a break from having to listen to you shouting,’ her dad had replied mildly. As for the trouble she and Jenny got into the next morning, having sneaked off to the campsite bar with some boys they’d met and ending up violently sick, her ears rang even now to recall the thunderous recriminations. She’d never been able to stomach cider and black since.

Holidays with mates had been more fun at least: easy-going, sun-drenched weeks in cheap European resorts where flirting with the sloe-eyed waiters became an art form. Pounding nightclubs, tiny dresses, shots of ouzo thrown back with abandon, and the worst sunburn of her life, thanks to falling asleep on the beach hungover at midday, once and once only. Ah, to be young and stupid. Those were the days.