She opened her calendar and saw she was supposed to be working at The Three Fishes on Friday, noon till three and six till closing. Friday the 13th. It seemed like a bad omen. Was she even still employed at the pub? Tubb hadn’t been in touch. She took her phone out. Nope, still nothing.

After considering her injured hand for a minute and flexing it she rang Tina. It was eleven forty-five so she’d be about to open.

‘Hey, stranger!’ Tina said warmly. ‘How’s everything?’

They chatted for several minutes before Lily, concentrating on sounding normal, whatever normal was, said, ‘My hand’s good enough for me to come back to work on Friday if it can be lightish duties.’

Tina breathed an audible sigh of relief. ‘Excellent. I want all hands on deck – even rather bashed-up hands, ha-ha – so I can take time off in lieu of the extra shifts I’ve worked. My family has forgotten what I look like while you guys have been away.’

‘Great, thank you,’ Lily said gratefully. She wanted to ask about Isaac but forced herself not to. ‘I’ll be there on Friday,’ she assured Tina, crossing her fingers and mentally adding, ‘if no one rings and tells me otherwise’. Unless she had some exhibition work to begin on soon, she’d need her income from The Three Fishes. It paid her modest rent. She had money to fall back on but only as long as she didn’t fall too heavily or for too long.

Feeling increasingly loose-endy she took Doggo out, joining the footpaths that looped around the village at the top end so as not to pass near the pub, despite assuming Isaac to be at Hayley’s place in Peterborough, when he wasn’t driving her to appointments.

As she strode through a landscape peeled bare by winter she reflected on Carola and Owen’s happiness and wondered also whether Neil and Franciszka would carry on their relationship now they were back in the village. As they had never discussed what would happen to the Middletones once the Swiss trip was over, Lily didn’t know when she’d see Neil, Eddie, Alfie and Warwick.

Lily had spent so much time with them since early summer that she missed them. Felt isolated and left out. And, for that matter, as she halted on a windswept, muddy footpath where brambles shook spiky arms at her, shut out … by her brothers.

She took out her phone, standing there with it in her hand so long with the wind whipping across the Fens and into her face that Doggo halted and looked back, his tail stuck out straight behind and a paw raised as if not sure how to go forward.

Then Lily did what she’d so often done when she was troubled. She texted her sister. I’m back in England. Want to meet up?