Audrey stared at Jess’s profile, silently willing her daughter to turn her head, to offer even the smallest sign of forgiveness, but Jess didn’t look at her, didn’t smile, didn’t speak.

They drove on in silence, Audrey replaying the conversation in her head, wondering what she could have said differently to change the outcome. But she realized that her only alternative was to have said nothing at all.

Staring out of the window as they turned onto Holland Park Avenue, she counted down the roads until they arrived at the junction with Lily’s street. Her eyes darted left to right even though she knew a chance encounter was unlikely. Lily would already be at the work dinner that had caused her to cancel their supper.

It was the same every time she drove down this road with Jess, whatever time of day or night, whatever day of the week: the hope that somehow fate would bring her daughters together on the streets of west London. But even though Lily and Jess had lived in the same city, three miles apart, for fifteen years, not once had they met by chance.

Peering out of the window into Lily’s street, Audrey felt the question niggling her. She turned to Jess, knowing there would never be a perfect time, that she couldn’t put it off much longer. She’d been living with Jess for nearly a month now and every day she’d searched for a good opportunity to broach the subject, but none had arisen. She could hear the clock ticking loudly in her ears, knew she didn’t have the luxury of time, and took a deep breath, trying to remember the phrasing she’d been rehearsing for weeks.

“Jess, I need to ask you something, but I want you to listen before flying off the handle. Can you do that for me?”

The tension thickened as Jess’s forehead puckered into a frown. “Why? What is it?”

Audrey tried to swallow but her mouth was dry. “I don’t want to get maudlin, and I know you don’t like talking about it, but I can’t just sit by, knowing I’m ill, and do nothing while you and Lily are still estranged—”

“Mum, I—”

“Please, Jess. Please hear me out—”

“But there’s no point. This conversation’s going nowhere.”

“There is a point, of course there is. I don’t want the first time you and Lily see each other in years to be at my funeral. I can’t bear the thought of it. Surely you can understand that? And what about Mia and Phoebe? Do you really want them having to contend with all that tension on the day you bury me? Please, Jess, please just meet her, talk to her. I can be there or not, whatever you want. Just please agree to see her.”

Audrey’s voice began to crack and she pinched her lips together. She didn’t want emotional blackmail to force Jess into agreeing. She wanted Jess to see for herself that this decades-long feud was pointless, that it did no one any good, least of all Jess.