Isaac’s heart began to beat like a train. ‘Why didn’t she tell me?’ Even as he asked the question he knew the answer. He’d been defensive and suspicious when Hayley began turning up at The Three Fishes. He hadn’t invited confidences. With horror, he realised that when he’d thought she’d been checking up on him or hoping to rekindle their relationship she’d probably been trying to tell him what was going on.

‘I have my own ideas but you’ll have to ask her,’ Nicola said crisply. ‘The thing is that I’m asking you to help her. She’s only four days post-op and our dad’s been knocked down by a car in Cornwall and is unconscious. Vicky and I need to rush down there.’ Her voice shook. ‘It’s proved impossible to get Hayley nursing care at no notice on a Friday and you know the only family she has are cousins she never sees. If we could have found someone other than you we would have. But you were in a relationship with her …’

‘Right,’ Isaac said numbly. His heartbeat had slowed until he felt almost lightheaded. Half his brain was trying to work out how soon he could get back to the UK and the other trying to come to terms with words like cancer and mastectomy. As Nicola kept talking, persuading, cajoling, guilting, he imagined Hayley trying to come to terms with losing a breast. He wasn’t sure of the details of breast reconstruction but it sounded frightening and horrifying.

‘Sorry,’ he said into the phone suddenly, cutting across Nicola’s verbal torrent. ‘Of course I’ll come, but you’re going to have to give me space to look up flights and stuff.’

‘But you’ll come tonight,’ Nicola pressed. ‘I’ve got to get to my mum and dad—’

‘The sooner you leave me alone to sort things out, the sooner I’ll know,’ he snapped.

Nicola ended the call without saying goodbye.

Isaac rose feeling as if he’d stepped through a portal into a different world. The singing Christmas tree was still singing, lights still blazing, the music still ringing out, yet everything had changed. He realised a figure was coming towards him and it was Lily.

Lily.

His heart twisted. This was going to screw up everything.

‘All OK?’ she asked breathlessly, concern in her eyes.

He shook his head. ‘No.’ He recounted the situation as economically as he could, watching shock, horror and sympathy flit across her face as she listened. He wound up with, ‘So I feel I have no alternative but to try and get back.’ He stopped, realising he was telling the woman he’d slept with last night that he was abandoning her, letting the whole group down, to fly off and look after the woman he used to be in love with.