She’d craved real. She’d thought she had real and honest, but it turned out she’d been wrong about that. She was still being shut out. Once again, she was on the outside.

She’d been close to euphoric when Jack had left this morning, but after spending several hours with Izzy she no longer felt that way. She felt like an addict coming down after a high.

She made her excuses to Carolyn and returned to the Lodge, bypassed the kitchen and went straight to her room where she took a shower, scrubbed the last remnants of the lake from her skin and her hair, and looked critically at the clothes she’d packed for the trip.

Try to learn more about Becca, yes. Try to understand her, yes to that, too. But dress like her? Act like her? No way. And that was something else that she could no longer ignore. Jack rarely talked about Becca. He dodged the subject, changed the subject, looked uncomfortable. She’d assumed it was his way of handling grief, that he’d share when he was ready, but what if she’d been wrong about that? What if there was something else he hadn’t told her? Knowing what she now knew, it was hard not to wonder if there were other secrets he hadn’t shared.

This time she didn’t need guidance on what to wear. She grabbed a dress in a cheerful flowery print and pulled it over her head.

Hearing voices in the garden, she looked out of the window and saw Jack. He and Molly had just returned from sailing and he was deep in conversation with Todd, while Molly ran around the garden after Chase.

Flora pondered the best way to handle this. She hated confrontation. All her life she’d been afraid of it, believing that it would ultimately lead to rejection, but she saw now that fearing rejection had stopped her having honest relationships. Ironically that approach had led her to feel more lonely, not less. It had stopped her connecting with people. It had made her reluctant to make herself vulnerable. She’d tiptoed through her life instead of striding confidently forward. Clare’s mother was right that sometimes you needed to trample a few daisies.

She had to decide if this relationship had a future, and the only way to do that was to confront Jack.

She was going to talk to him calmly and honestly about her feelings, but first she was going to make him talk about Izzy. She was the priority.