She had wanted other things from life and she had gone out and got them. It wasn’t her fault that Penny had decided to stay behind. She just wished Elle could accommodate both her dreams and her family. But was that even possible? she wondered. After all, she had chosen family, or at least had chosen to put aside her dreams and make a life for herself here in the Bay. It was nowhere near as glamorous as her sister’s of course (in truth it wasn’t in the least glamorous at all) but it was a simple life and Penny believed herself to be a simple, straightforward person. She’d never wanted or expected anything other than the basic things, good times with friends and family, an enjoyable but undemanding job, someone to love and perhaps someday a family of her own. She figured she’d achieved at least two of those things so there was really nothing to complain about. Penny guessed that Elle wondered if she’d felt resentful over the fact that she had left, but she could honestly say that wasn’t the case, though she did occasionally envy how her sister could so easily extricate herself from family responsibilities. Penny could never do that; even if she wanted to. One of her greatest joys was spending time with her mother here at the hotel and she wouldn’t have swapped that for the world. Tears came to her eyes. She just wished she’d opened her eyes a little more to what was really happening with the business, perhaps then her mum wouldn’t have . . . But no, she couldn’t go there, couldn’t torture herself with the notion that she might have been able to prevent anything. Anna was a little like herself she knew, always wanted to look on the bright side on things. Maybe her mum never truly did understand the magnitude of the problems here. Either way, Penny didn’t think she could possibly have figured it out either; she’d never possessed Elle’s analytical mind – her incisive ability to see beneath the surface, and ferret out the truth, emotions aside. It was yet another marked difference between the sisters’ personalities. While Penny continued hunting for things to save, she figured she might as well keep an eye out for her dad’s mysterious record collection, the elusive Beatles vinyls so often mentioned in her mother’s diaries. There was no turntable in the hotel, so it was likely that her parents had stored any records away somewhere in the meantime. And since there was going to be so much upheaval when they moved, she didn’t want to run the risk of them getting lost.