‘It is.’ In a few minutes Hannah had arranged to meet Cassie the next morning at ten. She handed the phone back to Ratty with a grin. ‘Thanks!’ Her heart lifted at having something, even a short-term project, to feed her ambitions.

He grinned back. ‘Do you know where to find Carlysle Courtyard? We’ve a new tenant moving into one of our rentals in Little Lane tomorrow or I could show you.’

‘I know, thanks,’ she said. ‘I owe you a drink.’

He glanced at his watch. ‘Another time. I have to take the dog out before bed. Our little boy’s teething so we’re up half the night.’

Half an hour later, Deanna too began to yawn because Shelby had been up at the crack of dawn and Hannah left the pub at the same time as her, shivering and pulling up her hood as she realised something cold was falling, touching her face like icy fingertips.

‘Snow?’ Deanna gazed at the spicules dancing like moths in the halo around a street light.

‘More like sleet,’ Hannah decided, thinking of the big feathery flakes she’d grown used to in Sweden. ‘Brr. Let’s go.’ After hugging goodbye, as Deanna lived on the Bankside Estate and Nan’s cottage was in the opposite direction, she strode through the village, calling goodnight to other hurrying villagers huddled into thick coats.

She halted, captivated by a Christmas tree in a window of a red-brick terraced house, lights flickering green and red, tinsel glittering. Evidently, the little house’s occupants were in a hurry to welcome Christmas.

Her heart warmed. She was going to be home in Middledip for Christmas after all with carol singers and festive meals, fairy lights glowing through winter mists. It would be the first of December tomorrow. A good day to make a new start.

Chapter Fourteen

Next morning, Hannah left fifteen minutes early for the meeting with Cassie, intrigued to see what was needed to get Carlysle Courtyard up and running.

Port Road took her out of the village past the performing arts college. A couple of miles later she turned left into Fen Drove. Hawthorn hedges edged the lane, a tracery of bare sticks and thorns in the pale winter light. The remnants of last night’s sleet edged ruts and crevices like tentative white brushstrokes on a painting.

The turning into Carlysle Courtyard looked like a farm track, rutted and muddy. She swung her mum’s car into the paved square that would once have been the stable yard and jumped out. Three small vans, two white and one yellow, stood on a gravel car park beyond the hedge.