‘Are you telling me you’re asking a virtual stranger to move in with you?’

‘Yes? Is that bad?’

‘Usually not advised.’

‘We’d save money too, living together. I could put more away!’ She bit her lip, realizing what she’d said. ‘Sorry.’

He smiled. ‘Well, if you put it like that, how can I say no?’

NINE

2018

It was somewhere near here, thought Kate, gazing hopefully up at the trees. It had been almost ten years since she’d come to this park, just south of Crawley. When Becky had become a teenager, she’d declared herself to have outgrown it but before that they would come frequently. Actually, it wasn’t so much a park as a wood, maze, cafe, petting farm and lake, all housed in 2,000 acres. She’d brought Becky here from babyhood – they’d get on the bus and escape the fumes and dirt of south London. At first, she’d push her in her pram, then later, Becky had toddled about while Kate took pictures of her hiding in the rhododendrons and exclaiming wide-eyed at the guinea pigs and lambs. Here was also where Becky had climbed her first tree – an ancient oak – and that was where Kate was headed now, as the tree had remained special to both of them; even when Becky had graduated to zip-wiring through the canopy, she’d always had to come here, just to say hello.

Of course, trees as well as children grow, and the area around where Kate used to come had changed dramatically. Small saplings now acted as a gateway to the trees beyond, and up in the big old matriarchs, the mass of new leaves hid noteworthy branches. ‘Becky’s’ tree had a prominent forked branch that split into two halfway up, and massive arms that curved upwards. When Kate finally saw it, she was reminded of how Becky had used one of those arms to lever herself up higher, getting three, four metres up into the canopy. Kate had only agreed to her climbing it if she promised to stay low, but Becky had gone higher when she wasn’t looking and then promptly got stuck. Kate smiled as she remembered how she’d had to hitch herself up to go and rescue her, getting ‘advice’ from her seven-year-old daughter as she climbed, whose excuse for disobeying her mother’s instructions was, ‘I forgot’.

She looked up and saw the branch she’d had to coax her down from, near the little hollow in the trunk where Becky had imagined fairies lived. The same place where, on another day, Becky had climbed, more confidently this time, and planted a knife, fork and spoon in the damp cavity, that she’d snaffled from the kitchen drawer, ‘so they can have tea parties’, and Kate let her do it rather than hoist herself back up in the tree again. Some arguments were best left.

It was quiet here, as she was near the boundary of the park and not many people came this way. She’d been undecided, at first, as to where to go. She was tired of London, of having worked non-stop for the last few months, and needed a change of scene, to celebrate away from the house. For today was the day she had bought her shares.