Maybe she should tell him, but if she did he might feel pressured to do it more often and she didn’t feel able to cope with that. She needed everything to be sorted out before she could get on with her life, and arresting the thug who’d carried out the attack—may he rot in his prison cell—might be a step in the right direction, but it was a long way from being enough.

Vaguely registering Richie’s arrival—Henry or her mother must have let him in—she stayed where she was, in no mood to see anyone if she didn’t have to. He’d become a regular visitor to the house since Marcy had come home, although he’d ended the newspaper blog a while ago—Marcy had asked him not to post updates on her progress. She just wanted to fade away from public recognition. However, before giving it up, he’d persuaded her to authorize a short thank-you message to everyone who’d lightened the darkest of her days with their kind words.

He came now simply because he knew Marcy wasn’t going out much, so he brought chitchat and the kind of books and magazines he thought might interest her, in spite of knowing she could get most things online. It was where she did all her shopping these days, clothes and cosmetics, a garden swing seat for Claudia’s birthday, and an Il Cessol Stradivarius copy for Jasmine to replace the one lost in the fire. It was very similar to the one Joel had given her, and in its way just as precious.

Jasmine often played for her, and when she did Marcy would sit quietly enjoying the beautiful sounds her granddaughter brought to life in the music, the sigh of wind in trees, footsteps in the snow, laughter, birdsong, rain.

In a physical sense Marcy’s recovery continued to be as good as her medical team had hoped for, only two further grafts since her discharge, and though she still wore splints on her neck and hand at night to stretch the skin, she wasn’t using them as much during the daytime.

The problem that remained was her mental state, her morale, or whatever it was that had stopped functioning the day of the fire. Although she still saw the psychologist once a fortnight Claudia had no idea what she was telling him, although he’d admitted to sharing Claudia’s concerns that the post-trauma symptoms hadn’t gone away. But he didn’t feel they were getting worse, so all they could do was continue monitoring the situation, and Claudia must feel free to contact him if anything happened to worry her.