Blake had been such an important figure in her life. He’d given her a job at sixteen in the kitchen of the estate-turned-hotel and she’d been awed by the glamour and luxury of the grand building, the immaculate restaurant, and the opulence of the rooms she’d been brave enough, at the time, to sneak a peek at. It was a far cry from the small, boxy council house she and her mother had shared on the outskirts of town.

Back then, she’d been trying to save up enough money for the culinary college in London she’d wanted to attend after secondary school, but the accident … Well, she’d needed an extra year and Blake had not only kept her job open, but also visited her in hospital for the short time she’d been there.

She’d escaped that accident pretty much unscathed, certainly in comparison to Victoria and Zoe. The tiny silvery scars crisscrossing her arms were nothing in comparison to the deeper hurts of her friends. Lily tried not to think about that night, but even now as she pressed on through beneath the thick canopy, memories flashed like shards of light through the leaves, dappling her mind.

A screech of tyres, the blue-and-white emergency lights, the harrowing screech of metal as firefighters sliced through the roof of the car. She shivered beneath the memory of screams of terror, of pain. Of being crushed up against the side door, where she’d had a clear view across the back seats, right into the windscreen of the car that had hit them, bonnet to side, Claudia having recklessly tried to overtake them and spun out of control.

All hell had broken loose. Men yelling, people prodding and poking, making her move when it had been the last thing she’d wanted. She wouldn’t leave them – Victoria, Malie and Zoe – no matter how many times the paramedics tried to get her out. She’d gripped Malie’s hand beside her, reached for Victoria’s where she was stuck in the driver’s seat, and stared at Zoe as the only way to reach her. Lily had hung on as if their lives depended on it. They’d held hands like that, locked in some frozen tableau, until she’d been practically dragged from the wreckage.

When Lily and Malie had been discharged after a week or so, Zoe and Victoria had been stuck behind, still needing treatment. She and Malie had threatened to move in, but the nurses and staff at the hospital refused to allow it. Not that it had stopped them breaking in one night, only to set off the alarm on the emergency exit they thought they’d managed to wedge open on an earlier visit.