He gazed at the woman he used to love, the woman he shared a child with. ‘A few days ago somebody told me something that affected me on a fundamental level. I had no inkling at the time, but it’s the key to the future.’ He took her hand. ‘When you’re in a plane crash you have to get your own oxygen flowing before you can help others.’

Chapter Twenty-Five

Hannah put her phone on Do Not Disturb, ignored the little red circles that denoted calls and messages racking up, switched off notifications and refused to let herself turn tail for cosy old Middledip.

Instead, all Sunday she drove slowly, numbly, south through England until it was dark and she found herself near the coast of Kent, spent and needing to stop. Wanting people nearby, not to mention loos and showers, she accessed the internet and found a site a few miles away open over Christmas. They kindly squeezed in her small camper by moving flower tubs aside. As it wasn’t a designated pitch there was no electrical hook-up and Hannah, Jeremy’s warnings ringing in her ears, was frightened of flattening the battery. It wasn’t the one that fired the engine but she was terrified of being left without light. Wearily, she made up the bed and switched on the gas for the heating and the tiny hob.

Red, green and blue lights made the campground twinkle like a grotto and campers wore beaming smiles along with their gumboots and coats as they strode to the shower block but all Hannah saw was icy puddles between iron-hard wheel ruts and Jack Frost breathing on her windows. Morning in The Bus was like waking up inside an ice cube, nothing like gazing out on magical snowy Stockholm from the sanctuary of a warm hotel.

It might have been different if she’d shared the space with Nico. The cramped quarters could have been intimate and even the dread of having to hurry across the dark campground for a wee in the night laughed off.

How was he doing? And Josie and Maria? Maybe he was moving back to London so the Pettersson Family Unit Mark II could spend Christmas together. Or – her heart squeezed so hard she gasped – had Loren moved into the warmth of sweet little Honeybun Cottage?

Monday and Tuesday dragged. She walked to a local pub and drank two large glasses of wine but they didn’t make her feel better. It was hard to concentrate on reading or watching something on her phone. She hadn’t switched off banking transaction notifications and so saw the international transfer finally arriving from Albin but felt none of the triumph she’d anticipated. Thousands in the bank but emptiness in her heart.