Jenna blinked. She was thirty-three. Was thirty-three really past it? Perhaps it was. By thirty-three you’d discovered that fairy tales were for children, that men didn’t ride up with swords to rescue you; they were more likely to run you down while looking at the pretty girl standing behind you.

Resolutely she blocked that train of thought. She’d promised herself that she wasn’t going to do that. She wasn’t going to generalise and blame the entire male race for Clive’s shortcomings. She wasn’t going to grow old bitter and twisted, giving Lexi the impression that all men were selfish losers. It wasn’t men who had hurt her; it was Clive. One man—not all men.

It was Clive who had chosen to have a rampant affair with a trainee lawyer barely out of college. It was Clive who had chosen to have sex on his desk without bothering to lock the door. There were moments when Jenna wondered if he’d done it on purpose, in the hope of being caught so he could prove how virile he was.

She frowned. Virile? If she’d been asked for a word to describe Clive, it certainly wouldn’t have been virile. That would have been like describing herself as sexy, and she would never in a million years describe herself as sexy.

When had she ever had wild sex with a man while still wearing all her clothes? No one had ever been that desperate for her, had they? Not even Clive. Certainly not Clive.

When Clive had come home from the office they’d talked about household accounts, mending the leaking tap, whether or not they should have his mother for the weekend. Never had he walked through the door and grabbed her, overwhelmed by lust. And she wouldn’t have wanted him to, Jenna admitted to herself. If he had grabbed her she would have been thinking about all the jobs she still had to do before she could go to bed.

Blissfully unaware that her mother was thinking about sex, Lexi scuffed her trainer on the ground. ‘There would have been loads for me to do in London. Cool stuff, not digging up bits of pot from muddy ground. I could have done my own thing.’

‘There will be lots of things to do here.’

‘On my own. Great.’

‘You’ll make friends, Lex.’

‘What if I don’t? What if everyone hates me?’

Seeing the insecurity in her daughter’s eyes, Jenna hugged her, not confessing that she felt exactly the same way. Still, at least the people here wouldn’t be gossiping about her disastrous marriage. ‘They won’t hate you. You make friends easily, and everyone on this island is friendly.’ Please let them be friendly. ‘That’s why we’re here.’

Lexi leaned on the rail and stared at the island mournfully. ‘Change is the pits.’