It had taken a huge amount of effort throughout the day to act as though she didn’t have a care in the world. She didn’t think she’d fooled her mother entirely though.

‘You look a bit peaky,’ Mum had commented when they’d had a few moments alone in the garden. Willow loved the fact that her mother had used the word peaky. Was she the only person in the known universe still to use that word?

‘Funny you should ask, Mum,’ Willow had wanted to say, ‘I’m about nine weeks peaky.’

What she actually said was something vague about having not slept well the night before. Which was true. Just as she and Rick were getting ready for bed he had told her that he’d decided not to go with her to Mum’s. He’d explained that he felt uncomfortable at the prospect of being around Martha. ‘I don’t want to antagonise her any more than I have already,’ he’d said. ‘For the sake of your relationship I think it would be better for me to avoid her for the time being.’

Willow had tried to make him change his mind and come with her, but he’d been adamant. She hated knowing that he was so hurt by the way Martha had spoken to him and really she should take her sister to task for it. But the thought of getting into an all-out barney with Martha just didn’t appeal.

According to a personality test Willow had once completed online, she was a Class 1 People-Pleaser. Which meant, so the test informed her, she would go to extreme lengths to avoid conflict. She would also rarely say what she genuinely felt for fear of causing offence.

But she had been honest when she’d told her mother that she thought Ellis seemed nice. There again, maybe she’d only said what she had because instinctively she wanted to please her mother and make her happy.

From the front of the car, Martha said, ‘I’m going to give Auntie Geraldine another call when we get home.’

‘Why?’

This was from Tom.

Switching her gaze from the passing hedgerows that were now giving way to suburban housing, Willow shifted position so she could see Tom’s eyes in the rear-view mirror. She wanted to try and read his expression.

‘Because I guarantee Geraldine will be able to shed some light on our mysterious Ellis Ashton,’ answered Martha. ‘He and Mum said that he was at Geraldine and Brian’s wedding, so why have we never heard of him before? And why have we never heard his name mentioned by either Mum or her oldest friend who both, it turns out, knew Ellis at university?’

‘There must be plenty of people they knew back then whose names have never cropped up in conversation with you and Willow,’ said Tom.

It sounded perfectly plausible to Willow. But not to Martha.

‘It seems to me that I’m the only one really looking out for Mum,’ she asserted. ‘And I stand by what I said earlier, that I strongly believe we’re not being told the whole story. Call it a sixth sense if you like, but I swear they both became very shifty when I pressed the point on how well they knew each other. Did you see the way Mum looked at Ellis when he started to answer my question? It instantly made him go quiet.’