Elle didn’t say anything and Penny left her in the dining room. This wasn’t going to be easy.

With Gruff and Kaiser curled at her feet, Elle grudgingly settled at a table in the dining room and pulled out a blank page. She already had some idea of what she wanted, of course, but she never fully realised a project before it was down on paper.

She admitted now that she had always envisioned working with Rob on the entrance and explaining to him exactly what was needed. He would get it immediately, of course. She had pictured them bending over her plan, him making suggestions here and there.

She pushed the image from her mind: it was impossible to think of now. Penny was right; she just had to concentrate on the task at hand. She had to concentrate on something . . . anything but the sight of him in that hospital bed.

Tentatively at first, her heart still heavily entrenched in her stomach, Elle’s wrist began to move over the paper, strong charcoal lines appearing where there had only been blankness before.

Soon she worked on like someone in a trance, and it was more healing to her than any nightmare-soaked sleep she had endured over the last few days. It was finally a reprieve from thoughts of Rob.

Chapter 41

Rob’s eyelids flickered open. It was strange, but he thought he had felt something like silk brush across his face, the faintest scent of vanilla. But as he focused on his surroundings, his gaze rested on the unmistakably white ceiling and clinical surrounds of a hospital.

What the hell had happened? He tried to sit up, and was restrained at once by a blinding pain across his ribs and gentle hands pushed against his shoulders.

‘It’s all right, pet,’ said a familiar voice. ‘You’re all right.’

His mother – what was she doing here? And why did she smell so like . . .?

‘Was somebody here?’ he croaked, his mouth dry as the desert.

‘I’m here, love, that’s all that matters. And you gave us all a bit of a fright. Hold on, let me get a nurse—’

When the medical staff had carried out all their checks and given Rob some water, he struggled to comprehend what had happened.

He’d taken Celeste back to the airport, hadn’t he? He was almost certain that was what he’d been doing before . . .

‘Is Celeste OK? Was she . . .?’ Rob understood that he’d been in an accident and for a horrible moment he couldn’t remember if she was in the car with him when it happened.

‘She’s fine – lovely girl, too. But that one was just here,’ Grace said grumpily and the way she said it, with so many years of built up dislike, left Rob absolutely certain that it had been Elle.

She had been here, to see him. He knew it.