Privately Willow thought anyone, even the most innocent of people, would look shifty if they had Martha cross-examining them. ‘I think we should give Ellis a chance to prove himself,’ she suggested. ‘What do you think, Tom?’ Willow knew she was putting him on the spot, but if anyone could rein in Martha it would be Tom.

‘Perhaps a quick word with Geraldine might be a good idea,’ he said diplomatically. ‘I can’t see that it would do any harm.’

So long as Mum didn’t hear about it, thought Willow.

‘What if he asks Mum to marry him? Have you thought what that would mean for us?’

Willow inwardly groaned. Would Martha ever be quiet? ‘That we’d have a stepfather?’ she offered with impulsive flippancy.

‘You’d be happy with that, would you? Happy too for him to have Anchor House if anything happened to Mum?’

‘Hey, let’s not get carried away, Martha,’ said Tom. ‘I can’t see Naomi rushing into marriage. She’s much too sensible for that.’

There was a huff of exhalation from the front passenger seat, which Willow interpreted as dissatisfaction at Tom’s reasonableness. And very likely the idea that Mum was much too sensible to consider marrying Ellis.

After a lengthy silence, and just as Willow was closing her eyes to sleep, Martha said, ‘I wish now that I’d acted sooner. If I’d suggested that Mum sell Anchor House to move nearer us immediately after Dad died, or during those months of the coronavirus, she would never have met Ellis again.’

Willow hadn’t ever believed that Martha could persuade their mother to fall in step with her plans to move from Anchor House, not yet at any rate. But now that Willow was in the position she was – nine weeks peaky – she could see the attraction, if she did decide to keep the baby, of having Mum closer to hand.

‘You never know,’ said Tom, ‘if your mother and Ellis do plan on making things more permanent, they might want to live somewhere new for them both so that Ellis isn’t living in your father’s shadow.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Willow. ‘And if that’s the case, maybe then we could encourage them to move nearer the pair of us. Somewhere in between us for instance.’

‘You’ve changed your tune,’ said Martha.

‘I’m just trying to see things with a fresh perspective,’ Willow said lightly, noticing that her hand had once again strayed unconsciously to rest against her stomach.

She noticed too at the very same moment that Tom was looking at her in the rear-view mirror. Immediately she lowered her hand to her lap in case he read anything into the gesture and guessed her secret. If he did, he would be sure to tell Martha and then heaven only knew what would happen.

Chapter Nineteen

Unable to sleep that night, her mind restless with replaying all the excruciatingly awkward moments experienced that day – yesterday, as it was now – with Tom and the girls, Naomi was downstairs waiting for the kettle to boil. It was gone three o’clock, another hour or so and the dawn chorus would start up.