“Why don’t we sit down, and then we can plan the rest of the day?”

They drank their tea, and gradually Mandy got her to talk about today and tomorrow and the days after that. They came up with a plan for unpacking the house in the order that she would need things, and she could tell her mum felt better for it.

“If I haven’t said it before,” her mum said as they set their empty mugs down on the kitchen drainer, “I am so grateful to you for coming back here to help me. I know that must have been hard for you, to walk away from your life there so suddenly.”

Mandy shrugged. “I didn’t have to think about it, really. You needed me, and I wasn’t not going to be here for you, was I?” It had been hard, but her mum didn’t need to hear that. She’d stayed with her mum at the family home in the Cotswolds for these past few months, getting her through the worst of her grief and helping her sell up the old house and find this one.

Her mother pulled her in for a quick hug, something they rarely shared, and it touched Mandy.

“Well, thank you. I couldn’t have done this without you.” She paused and pulled back slightly to look at her daughter. She had crystal-blue eyes and pinned her with a piercing gaze. “Now, as much as I am grateful, I’m also a little worried.”

“Worried?”

“Well, you’ve been here, with me, for five months now. You don’t have a job or a partner, and you never really mention any friends. I certainly don’t expect you to stay here forever looking after me, so what are you going to do? I worry that you think you need to stay, but that isn’t a life you should lead. You could always go back to Australia, you know. I have my friends close by to keep an eye on me.”

Mandy smiled, touched by her mother’s concern. She’d never really expressed it before, always shaking her head at Mandy’s fierce independence, but never commenting one way or another on what Mandy did with her life.

“Don’t worry, Mum. I do have a plan. I was getting ready to talk to you about it tomorrow, actually.”

Her mum smiled and gestured to the chairs around the small table in the centre of the room.

“Well,” continued Mandy once they’d sat down. “The guy I worked for in Australia, he knows some people here who run bigger clubs than his. He thinks he might be able to set me up a job, and he’s arranged for me to meet a guy next Friday. He runs a club in the centre of the city.”

“So, you’ll stay in the UK now?”