Olivia and Maggie were both gazing at her with stricken expressions. Damn it. She totally had.

Lorna was unstacking the dishwasher when she glanced out of the window and saw the three women all sitting together by the pool. She smiled with pleasure at the sight. So often the women who came to stay here appeared stressed and frazzled, exhausting themselves under the pressure of trying to give their families the mythically perfect holiday experience. She’d much rather see her guests relax and have fun. It was good that Olivia was out there too, joining in. Even from this distance, Lorna could tell she’d picked up a bit of a tan from the sunny weather, and her body language seemed less tense. It made Lorna feel like a proud mother hen to see the difference in her.

‘Look, Roy,’ she said, gesturing towards the window as he came into the kitchen. ‘Isn’t that nice? I do like it when the families get to know each other.’

Roy came over, slotting his arms around her waist. He rested his head against her shoulder. ‘Remember that holiday we went on when Aidan was – what, about fifteen? And we met that lovely family from Dundee.’

Until that moment, Lorna had forgotten all about the lovely family from Dundee, but then a memory flickered at the back of her mind like an old cine-film and she seized hold of it. ‘Yes,’ she said slowly, as the details coloured themselves in. ‘Valencia, wasn’t it? We rented that little white house.’ And then she was remembering the warm evenings, sitting out in the communal courtyard with a bottle of Rioja, talking to the friendly couple they’d met, with the son around Aidan’s age, the cicadas chirruping in the background. How she’d loved waking up in that quiet, plain bedroom every morning as the sun rose, orange and magnificent, sweeping its light across the whitewashed walls. ‘That was a smashing holiday,’ she sighed.

There was a silence as they both drifted through their own memories and she wondered if Roy was wishing they could go somewhere similar again. And actually . . . Well, it was the strangest thing, but for the first time since Aidan died, she thought she might be able to manage that. Find another whitewashed house and enjoy a calm, relaxing break away together; relax into the stillness and the warmth.

‘Listen,’ she said, turning around so that they were facing one another. ‘We should look into going away in the autumn. Maybe the beginning of October, when the lettings have gone quiet. A little holiday, just the two of us, somewhere warm.’

He looked surprised and happy to hear her say such a thing, then hugged her to him. ‘I would really like that,’ he said quietly into her hair.