Just telling her sister last night that Lucy was pregnant had been bad enough; it didn’t bear thinking about how Martha would react if Willow admitted that she was also pregnant. She had only herself to blame, of course. She shouldn’t have said anything to Martha about being so relieved that Simon and Lucy hadn’t gone mad with her over losing Cedric; it had only then led to her having to explain why.

In contrast to Willow’s panicky fear of being pregnant, Simon and Lucy could not be more delighted or excited at finding themselves expecting a baby earlier than planned. She was pleased for them and such was their infectious happiness she had almost blurted out her own news. ‘Guess what, but I’m pregnant as well and haven’t a clue what I’m going to do!’

And wasn’t that the truth.

Chapter Seventeen

From the large balcony that led off from her bedroom, Naomi watched a sailing dinghy making its way out to sea by means of its motor. There wasn’t a breath of wind to be had, and in the surprisingly sultry stillness of the May morning, the puttering noise of the engine carried easily across the smooth surface of the water.

It was on such a day that Naomi, along with the girls and Tom, had gone out in Colin’s boat – the Marlow – to scatter his ashes. They’d taken it in turns to empty the urn, and with no breeze to speak of, there’d been no danger of Colin’s ashes flying back in their faces – something that always seemed to happen in films – they had quietly said their goodbyes. Afterwards, and with Tom at the helm, and with the engine running, they’d made their way round the headland to Bosham harbour and had lunch at the Anchor Bleu. By the time they’d arrived back at Tilsham, the sky had darkened, and the first heavy drops of rain began to fall. Within minutes, thunder boomed overhead and for the next hour a storm had raged. Naomi had watched the lightning fill the sky and imagined Colin, always a lover of a grand gesture, stage-managing the lowering of the final curtain on his life.

Turning away from the sea view and the memory of that day, she went inside to finish getting ready, hoping that today wouldn’t end in a storm. A storm of words and emotions, that was.

They arrived together a little after midday, just as Naomi had put the finishing touch of a vase of lilac blooms on the table on the verandah and Ellis was placing an opened bottle of white wine in the wine cooler. It would have been just the sort of scene Tom and the girls would have walked in on countless times before, except it would have been their father seeing to the wine. And Naomi wouldn’t be a mass of fumbling nerves. So much so, she knocked over a glass on the table in her rush to greet them, sending it crashing to the ground. In the ensuing kerfuffle as Ellis bent to help her pick up the pieces, they not only bumped heads, but managed to cut themselves on the broken glass.