Rob gave no other clues to how they’d met or what their relationship might be, and Celeste just kept smiling, so Penny assumed that he was doing his best to forget about Elle and that the newcomer was part of the remedy.

Well he’d get no judgement from her.

Chapter 19

Penny picked up the diary that she had been reading the day before, finding where she had left off. Anna had been a diligent writer, and had been good about detailing the events of family life – especially as a new mother. She found this particularly interesting considering she had heard from many of her friends with children that it was hard to do anything else with a newborn except take care of the baby and try to work in a shower a couple of times a week.

Apparently her mother had been a natural at parenthood, Penny thought, once again feeling a pang as she realised that if she ever had a child, her mother wouldn’t be around to help her find her way. She felt tears prick at her eyes before her subconscious reminded her that she hadn’t yet managed to find a boyfriend or a husband so there was no need to get ahead of herself. Her thoughts automatically segued to Colin’s strange comment the day before, and she quickly put it out of her mind and turned her attention back to reading.

Penny continued through the entries for about an hour, reading with relative ease until she felt her eyelids begin to droop. Yawning and scratching her head as she worked to finish the latest entry – at this point her parents had not long bought the hotel – she guessed that this was a good time to put it aside and get some sleep.

However, just as she was about to close the book, she came upon a passage that immediately began with a different tone than the others. Anna’s nervous energy was apparent in her writing – it practically jumped off the page – and Penny felt herself become alert as she read.

November 17, 1977

Feeling a little at a loss over what to do. One day everything is fine, the next, our world has spun on its axis. Of course, this puts a major spanner in the works, particularly with the hotel. If I am being honest, (and there is no point at this stage in not being honest) we haven’t been as good with our finances as we could have been. Yes, we bought the hotel and yes, we have also been spending some money on furnishing and renovating the place – but we haven’t been saving like we should have been, and another mouth to feed is really going to impact on everything.

I’m an idiot – I should have paid more attention, taken more care. But I hadn’t truly considered how another baby so soon after we’d started our hotel venture would throw everything off-balance . . .