As sisters they really couldn’t be more dissimilar. It never ceased to amaze Naomi that two children from the same parents could be so utterly different.

Whereas Martha was dark-haired and tall with an oval face and hazel eyes, and a nose that she claimed was too long, Willow was smaller with a more petite build and her heart-shaped face was framed by blonde hair. Her eyes were blue, like Naomi’s, and set wide apart. As a child she had always been picked to be an angel in the school nativity play, a role Martha had never been interested in playing. She always wanted to be the innkeeper announcing in a commanding voice that there was no room at the inn.

‘Ahoy there!’

Leaning forwards, Naomi turned her head to the left from where the voice emanated. She knew without actually seeing him that it was Ellis Ashton, the new tenant of Waterside Cottage, her nearest neighbour.

Ellis had moved in at the end of February, just over two months ago. He was sixty-four years of age, widowed with a grown-up stepson living in Los Angeles and had recently retired as a client director for an asset management firm. His work had taken him to Frankfurt, Brussels, New York and latterly London, where he’d been temporarily renting a house in Richmond. He’d then moved here to be nearer his mother, who was being looked after in a local care home.

‘Ahoy to you too,’ she said with a smile.

‘Permission to come aboard?’

‘Permission granted.’

Lifting the latch on the wooden gate, he pushed it open.

Now directly in front of her, Naomi could see that his denim-blue eyes matched the colour of his shirt and the sky above him. Bending at the waist, and in a very courtly manner, he kissed her cheek. Then with a smile – a smile that had not changed from the one she remembered a long time ago – he produced a bunch of pink and cream tulips from behind his back.

‘I’m afraid I’m guilty of stealing them from my landlord’s garden,’ he said, ‘but I wanted to give you something for making last night so special.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, blushing like a teenage girl at the memory of him cooking dinner for her and what happened afterwards. And which was the reason for her aching in so many places this morning.

Goodness, what would Colin have thought!

More to the point, what would Martha and Willow think?

Chapter Four

Tom Adams was on his way to work. It was now two days since Martha had secretly tested herself to see if she was pregnant.

He knew that his wife kept things from him, but then he kept things from her. Every couple kept shtum about something, he believed. Those who said otherwise were not being honest with themselves. To his way of thinking, it just wasn’t feasible, or sensible, to pour out every worrying thought one ever had.

It was because he loved Martha as profoundly as he did that he didn’t want to burden her with half of what went on inside his head. She had enough to cope with as it was with her longing to have a baby. They were only ten months into the process and already it was beginning to take its toll on her.