‘Please, please, please, please…’ Daisy muttered, eyes closed and hands clasped as if she was praying. I felt a pang of regret that I might be about to crush her hopes. Then I saw my brother glaring at me across the room, and the regret morphed into cut-throat ambition.

‘Mother, if you would be so kind?’

Nana Joy pressed one hand against her chest, raised the other aloft, took a deep breath and sang the opening line.

‘YES!’ Henry and I sprang to our feet, grabbing each other’s arms and doing a victory dance in time to Nana Joy, who was still singing.

‘How did you know?’ I muttered in his ear, not wanting to reveal that I’d have got the answer as wrong as my brother.

He dropped my wrist. ‘Android brain. Never lets me down.’ He shrugged, head bent as he sat back down and started readjusting his shirt cuffs, his eyelashes casting a perfect semicircle shadow on his cheekbones.

‘Impossible question,’ Jed grumbled once the celebrations had died down and Henry and I had been awarded the old vase that we used as a trophy. ‘Who could remember that apart from Bea?’

‘I remembered,’ Dad replied, with a patient smile.

‘Okay, so who could remember apart from someone so full of sickeningly, soppy love for her that he files away every minute thing she does?’

It took every ounce of will I possessed, but I managed to avoid glancing at Henry as I made my excuses and went up to bed. Partly because I was so embarrassed by Jed’s declaration. Partly out of worry that there might be a hint of truth in it, and I might see something in Henry’s reaction that would make the next few days even more awkward than I feared.

4

It was inevitable that being back in my childhood bedroom would throw up a thousand memories. It was so long since I’d been up here, even climbing the steep staircase to where my room was tucked up in the eaves of the Coach House generated a flashback to the countless times I’d scampered or stomped up there before. The smell hit me as soon as I opened the door – wood and a faint whiff of varnish, blended with the lingering trace of the perfume Adam had bought me for Christmas one year.