‘Does he have to be here for this?’ Georgie asked her sister, gesturing in Adam’s direction. Cass looked pained. ‘Anyway, who said I don’t want to live here myself?’

‘Well, do you?’ asked Cass.

‘No, actually. What would I do down here? No one needs a voice coach around here.’

‘Precisely,’ said Adam.

‘So you don’t want us to have it even though you don’t want it yourself,’ said Cass.

The fact that Cass was able to summarize her sister’s position so neatly rankled with Georgie. All her old feelings of injustice and rivalry were dangerously close to the surface. Cass always seemed to win. The temptation of saying something so dreadful as to cause an unbridgeable breach rose up in her. Cruel words threatened to spill over and stick, like boiling milk. It was the only ammunition she had. But it was the weapon her mother had used, and Georgie did not want to be like Celia.

‘OK. Can you give me a few days to think it over? I’d like to talk about it on my own with Jake, see what he feels. He’s very attached to this place too, you know.’

‘I think we should try and resolve things as soon as we can. We don’t want to drag this out,’ said Adam.

‘I agree,’ said Cass.

‘Fine,’ said Georgie. She had a splitting headache suddenly. It’d be a relief not to go on with this discussion.

As soon as she and Jake stepped on to the Paddington train at Truro, Georgie felt better. She was disappointed and angry with how she had behaved at the farm. She had hoped it would stop, when Celia died, this childish petulance. No wonder her husband had never wanted to come to Cornwall with her. The sense of injured competition she felt towards her niece was especially shaming. Always, in the back of her mind, the words What about me? were going round and around, on repeat.