‘Don’t miss this chance to win tickets for two for the Chichester Festival Theatre,’ he urged the crowd, ‘or dinner for four at the Millstream Hotel in Bosham. There’s also a jeroboam of Champagne, and who wouldn’t want to win that?’

‘Ellis is a very good MC, isn’t he?’ said Willow, who had materialised out of nowhere and on her own. She was dressed in a diaphanous maxi-length dress the colour of clotted cream, and on her feet – her toenails sparkly with pink glittery nail varnish – were diamanté flip-flops. Over her shoulder was a faded denim bag decorated with an embroidered rainbow and threaded through her blonde plaits were daisies she’d picked from the lawn at Anchor House. She looked so young, almost childlike; Naomi was reminded of all the times she had brushed Willow’s hair for school in the morning.

‘He wasn’t at all sure about accepting the job when he was asked to do it,’ she said, suddenly nostalgic for those days when the girls had been children, ‘but as everyone in the village knows, nobody refuses a request from Jennifer.’

‘Did he know that Dad used to do it?’ Willow asked, after eating a strawberry from a small biodegradable tub in her hands – the vicar had insisted this year that they had to be as plastic-free as possible.

‘Yes,’ said Naomi. ‘I told him. Jennifer did as well. It seemed only fair.’ She kept to herself that Jennifer had joked about Ellis having an appealingly sexy come-to-bed-with-me voice that was guaranteed to seduce the punters into spending even more money than they usually did.

‘So things are still going okay between you and Ellis?’

Naomi felt her face blushing like a schoolgirl at her daughter’s question. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘More than okay. Is … is that a problem for you?’

‘No. Or at least I don’t think so. It does seem funny though, you being with a man who … who isn’t Dad. Does everyone in the village know about the two of you now?’

Naomi gave a hesitant smile. ‘I would imagine so.’

‘Well,’ Willow said with a sigh, ‘I suppose that makes it all the more real, doesn’t it?’

‘You sound like you would rather it wasn’t.’

‘Oh, ignore me,’ she said with a shrug, at the same time scooping up another strawberry and putting it in her mouth. ‘I’m all over the place at the moment. Although Martha would say no change there then.’

Naomi smiled. ‘You seem very much on the ball to me, darling. Where are the others?’

‘I left them having a go on Bash the Rat. I think Rick and Tom were keen to have a mine’s-bigger-than-yours contest. Oh, and I bumped into Finn.’

‘How is he?’

‘Just the same as he ever was.’ She frowned. ‘But if his name comes up in conversation later, best not let on to Rick that he was a boyfriend of mine though. No point in … well … you know.’