Chapter Two

Willow was fast asleep when her mobile rang.

It had been a deliciously deep sleep, the sort that didn’t respond well to being disturbed, but in fumbling for her mobile on the bedside table she woke with a jolt, realising two things.

Firstly, she wasn’t in bed, she was in the bath.

And secondly, by flinging out her hand for her phone, she had knocked over whatever had been on the wooden stool next to the bath.

She had found the sweet little stool in a junk shop and carried it home triumphantly, filled with plans to do it up with some pretty chalk paint and then sell it on eBay. She had thought it might be the start of something new and creative for her to do, a bit like Mum’s old gardenalia business. She had imagined gathering enough stock together to open a small shop called Willow’s Emporium. Full of enthusiasm for the idea, she had bought the necessary tins of paint, brushes and whatever else was required, but had somehow never got around to painting the stool.

If ever she needed a symbol to capture the complete lack of achievement in her life, that stool was it.

‘Willow, are you there?’

At the sound of her sister’s voice in her ear, she shook herself fully awake, then she shivered at the coldness of the water. Leaning forward to turn on the hot tap, she said, ‘Yes, I’m here.’

‘Are you in the bath?’ asked Martha above the noise of the gushing water. She said it as though Willow had been caught doing something indecent.

‘I am,’ she said.

‘So what do you think?’

‘What do I think about what?’

‘What I’ve just been telling you.’

Oh Lord, thought Willow, she must have been so busy thinking of that wooden stool, she hadn’t heard a word of what Martha had said. Attention span of a goldfish, that’s what Dad used to say about her. In one ear and out the other.

‘Sorry,’ she improvised, ‘it’s a bad line, I didn’t hear you.’

There was a frustrated sigh in her ear.

‘Try turning the taps off and you might hear a lot better.’

Willow did as her sister said, and Martha went on.

‘My idea is for us to go down to Mum’s at the weekend and take her out for lunch and then put forward our plan.’

‘What plan?’

Another sigh. ‘The one about encouraging Mum to sell Anchor House.’

Willow frowned. She had hoped Martha had forgotten about that. Her sister had first mentioned it a few months ago, but Willow hadn’t taken it seriously, or given it any more thought. She just couldn’t imagine Mum wanting to leave Anchor House and all her friends down there in Tilsham. And apart from anything else, it was home.

Not just any old home, but their home. It was where Willow and Martha had grown up and where Willow’s every happy childhood memory revolved around Anchor House and the pretty harbour village that was squeezed in between Bosham and Chichester.