Lawrence had not been amused and told her crossly that she knew nothing about business. When Grace pointed out that she was very successful at what she did, bringing jobs in under budget and on time, being creative and setting her clients up in the marketplace through clever PR, he’d told her that ‘dabbling in advertising is just fakery, spin-doctoring. Nothing serious. You’re no deal maker.’

Grace hadn’t bothered to answer him. He was out of touch with ad land, which had changed considerably from the old advertising agencies Lawrence knew. Now advertising reached across a broad spectrum of media and it was definitely more PR savvy. But there was no point in trying to tell him that. He knew everything. Or so he thought.

So now as she sat there beside the man she’d fallen in love with, the man who had wooed and charmed her, the man she had married and who had fathered her child, she felt she was sitting with a stranger. This was someone she didn’t know – or like much – at all.

It was a quiet, almost calm revelation. The devastating fire had somehow burned out the passion, the respect, the love she’d had for this man. Now, after the fire, when all the comfortable trappings had been stripped away from her life, she could see that she was standing in the ashes of her marriage. With the loss of everything she had, save the most precious thing in her world, her daughter, had come a renewal. A cleansing. She saw it clearly. And in the silence, as they sat side by side, like strangers travelling forward together, but separately, she knew she would have to start over.

Alone.

2

Grace walked up to what used to be her front door. Or was it the front gate? In the sea of black ash, charred timbers, blackened bricks and twisted metal it was hard to recognise anything of her once lovely home.

Melanie, wearing thick boots, was picking her way through the ash, bending down to retrieve small fragments and then discarding them. Her long red hair was pinned up in a messy bun and her eyes flashed with emotion as she surveyed the wreckage. She finally came over to Grace, who was watching with her arms hugging her body, shivering, although it wasn’t cold.

‘Let’s go. There’s no point us being here,’ said Melanie firmly, tucking her arm in Grace’s and leading her back to the car.

‘The insurance people have sifted through it all and say there wasn’t much that was retrievable,’ Grace said. ‘Obviously some things were, since Lawrence has his silverware – I should have asked him about it, but my mind was on other things.’ She sighed. ‘They’ve got stuff stashed somewhere. In case they’re needed for evidence, apparently.’

‘Do they know what caused the fire?’ Melanie started the car.

‘Could have been a faulty gas bottle. Or possibly electrical issues. Lawrence is angry. He wants someone to blame. I’m just so, so sad. And scared, really. Scared about our future: mine and Daisy’s.’ She’d barely spoken to Lawrence since storming out of his office on that horrible day, and was slowly trying to come to terms with the thought of life without him. ‘Lawrence looked after all the home stuff, paperwork, bills, insurance and so on, so I don’t really know. But never again,’ said Grace bitterly. ‘I’ve learned that the hard way.’