Izzy’s proud of what she did and so is Mum. No one would have thought that because of her, Dad would end up in prison and Mum would be safe and so would she. Really safe. She did that on her own. Wow. She could have done it a long time ago, but she’s not sure if anyone would have believed her, without what happened to Sorrel added in. It’s great they’re staying with Eve; she wants to see how Sorrel does, obviously. It’s working out okay, living together. She can see Blake isn’t sure about her now, Charley doesn’t like her much and Grace definitely doesn’t since she told her about Eve and Martin. The important thing is that Mum, Poppy, Sorrel and Eve are on her side. She’s glad things have worked out as they have, mainly because Mum’s completely different. She hasn’t got any bruises, she even walks differently. It makes it all worthwhile. It’s just her and Mum in their family from now on and Dad can’t do one thing about it.

Part Six

FRIENDSHIP

I love the bit in Winnie the Pooh when he says a friend is one of the nicest things you can have, and also that quote from Woodrow Wilson about friendship being the cement that holds the world together, which is a roundabout way of explaining to myself why I forgave Eve and why she forgave Melly. It’s hard to understand otherwise, even for me. I mean, who would have thought I’d end up being close to the woman who had an affair with my husband? She was a friend first, then a sort of enemy, then someone I had to help, and in the end, a best mate. I realized what she was made of the day they found Sorrel; you can see it in her face which was on all the front covers of the papers. The journalists got there in time to capture it as she came out of the shed the day Sorrel was found. She was blazing with love. She’d been through things that would have destroyed some women – the loss of her son, the kidnap of her daughter – but that day she was on fire. She reminded me of my grandmother; the way she used to be for us. I forgave her; it seemed crazy to throw away our friendship because of Martin.

It took Eve a while to work it out with Melly – maybe she went down a similar line of reasoning: why let a man destroy something as precious as friendship? It was different, of course, because Paul had destroyed so much, but that was hardly Melly’s fault and I think that’s what Eve came round to thinking in the end.

We should have known by then; just when we thought it was all beginning to settle down, that something worse was coming our way.