In answer, she pulled his head down to hers, pressing against his hard body as if trying to get right through his clothes.

His hands dropped to her behind, the line of his body following the curve of hers. ‘I lied about the hotel room,’ he groaned against her mouth. ‘I just didn’t want to get involved with the others feeling they had to find me somewhere to sleep.’

‘That’s OK.’ Lily rubbed against him to make him catch his breath. ‘I have the key to Los’s annexe because I had the choice of staying there but preferred to be here – with my own family.’ The final words came out shyly.

Behind them a tiny wooden bird shot out of the Lötscher clock. ‘Cu-ckoo, cu-ckoo—’

Isaac grinned. ‘That clock is so not going to hang in the bedroom unless we can find a way to shut it up.’

Lily giggled. ‘We can’t leave it here. It might wake the baby or Dugal and Keir could find it in the morning and take it apart.’ So they took it down from the wall and found out how to disable the cuckoo mechanism before packing it back in its box.

Without telling the others, who had all discreetly stayed upstairs, they bundled up in their coats and set off hand in hand along the snowy streets to Los’s annexe, Isaac carrying the clock, letting themselves in and closing all the blinds.

Then Isaac pulled Lily back into his arms and began to steer her in the direction of the bedroom with its welcoming double bed. ‘I love you, Lily. Let’s begin that shared time.’

Epilogue

January, thirteen months later

Lily sat in one of the new mini-armchairs at The Three Fishes, Tubb and Janice to her left on a matching sofa, Tubb looking slightly out of place. ‘Weird for us all to be on the customer side of the bar.’ Lily grinned, giving her brother a nudge with her toe.

‘Hmm,’ he said, sipping his alcohol-free gin and slimline tonic.

‘We love it,’ said Janice firmly, giving Tubb’s arm a squeeze. ‘Retirement’s wonderful, isn’t it, Harrison? We can live in the village, travel whenever we feel like it and reap the benefit of all those years of hard work.’

‘Hmm,’ he said again.

Lily exchanged a conspiratorial look with Janice. Tubb loved being retired except when he visited the village pub that had been his life. Lily knew Isaac had never regretted leaving the trade but she wasn’t so sure about her older brother.