I took another sip of my tea, remembering my wedding day two weeks ago. Even though it’d been bitterly cold outside, the orangery of our home had been decorated to look as springlike as possible – the time of new beginnings. Sol had walked me down the aisle and Tobey’s sister, Jessica, had been his best woman. It had been one of the few highlights in a dark winter. Tobey and I had agreed to delay our honeymoon until the summer holidays so that we could take Troy and Libby with us. They both needed to feel they belonged to our new family, which I believed with all my heart they did.

Libby was a revelation. I didn’t expect to take to her as much as I did. She certainly spoke her mind. She had no trouble standing her ground when she believed she was right, and was upfront in admitting when she got things wrong. I liked that. Nor was she afraid to stand up to her father and tell him when she thought he was acting like a plank. Some of their arguments got so heated that I had to intervene to cool the temperature between them. Libby was so much like him, too much sometimes, but it was good to watch the relationship between them blossom and grow.

After Mum’s funeral, Troy had filled me in on Libby’s home life with Misty and, quite frankly, what he’d revealed had given me the chills. I suspected he probably only knew a fraction of what she’d had to endure with her mother. Sometimes I looked at her and grew wistful about what might have been. She might’ve been my daughter with Tobey, rather than Misty’s, but such thoughts never lingered. I wouldn’t let them. Libby was with us now and, by a twisted quirk of fate, I was her mother. Whatever else happened, she needed to be protected from fallout and cherished, and I was determined to see to that.

Especially in light of a conversation I’d overheard that had taken place in the kitchen between Troy and Libby a few days after Mum’s funeral.

‘Libby, let’s get something straight,’ said my brother. ‘You and I are not family. We’re not even friends. Not really. We’re just two people who went through the same hell together and now we occupy the same space. I don’t have a problem with that, but don’t make us out to be more than we are.’

‘I was only—’