‘Not all of us. Ava doesn’t know.’

Ava was one of the reasons her head was going to explode. Imagine if she’d left with Lorenzo. ‘And now Ava has almost been killed by an idiot in a campervan. Imagine if I had been in Italy when that happened.’

‘She’s fine. She’s tough like us. And you would fly home.’ Mim smiled beatifically. ‘I think Ava’s in love.’

Stella felt like the little balcony had just cracked off the side of the building, fallen to the ground twenty feet below them, and carried her with it. ‘Not with the city doctor? The one with amnesia?’

‘Just a suspicion,’ Mim said serenely.

Stella wanted to twist her hands together and cry. Or break something. Neither of which she ever did, but lately the feelings were bubbling inside and tearing to get out, and fifty was a stupid age to lose control.

This was all her fault. She waited a little until she could speak more calmly. ‘It’s a penance for the lies. I should have told them the truth. That love isn’t enough if that person is from another world …’

‘Stella May.’ Her mother’s voice broke in. ‘Stop it. Your father and I were from different worlds and that worked out very well, thank you. Hana and Jock are from different worlds.’

Stella said softly, ‘What about Noah? What about me? I deserted their father when he needed me and then he died.’

‘You got homesick. Tell your children now, be done with it. You were pregnant and lonely. He did something stupid and then he died. It’s time to let go of that volcano of bitterness you’ve carried for twenty years. It’s done enough damage. Don’t let it damage others.’

This was Mim at her most determined. But how could Stella confess she’d lied to the very children she’d promoted truth to after saying she’d been happy in Sydney, and very much in love?

Stella stood up as if to take a turn around the room, but the verandah was so small. So she sat down again and thought reluctantly of the painful past. Well, they had been happy for a while. But Ava in love with a man from the city? Her darling Ava, who’d been hit by that campervan and almost killed along with her companion, the amnesic companion her daughter wanted to bring back to Setabilly to convalesce? It all began to make horrible sense and her dread grew.

Three hours later, Mim and Stella had packed the car in preparation for returning to Setabilly and had driven back to the hospital for Ava.

Stella walked into Zac’s room to meet him, as requested by her daughter. The instant she saw the way her daughter looked at him, she knew. It took all of two seconds to confirm her mother’s suspicions were correct. Two seconds.