‘Thank you,’ Rachel said, a little numb. ‘I’ll… think about it. In the meantime, perhaps I should move out of the tower.’

Ron, who had been working quietly in the background, looked up at this, frowning. Rachel offered him a watery smile.

‘If I show I’m happy to do that willingly, perhaps she’ll see I’m not trying to take anything from her,’ Rachel said, for Ron’s benefit as much as the solicitor’s. ‘I can continue to do the work you’ve employed me to do, here at the gatehouse and at the bookshop.’

There was a pause. ‘That… is very generous of you,’ Crosswick said. ‘But do you have somewhere else to go?’

Rachel didn’t. This is how easy it is to lose everything. Again, she thought. She looked away from Ron. ‘I’ll find somewhere.’

‘All right, then,’ he said. ‘I regret that you feel the need to do this at all, but I think it will set Trudy’s mind at rest. It is my hope that this matter can be resolved quickly.’

They said their goodbyes and Rachel hung up the phone, forcing a smile for Ron’s benefit. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘I’d better find somewhere to stay for a few days.’

Ron shook his head. ‘This is ridiculous. They can’t do this.’

Rachel smiled. ‘They didn’t, Ron. It’s my decision. But I think it’s for the best.’

‘Where will you go? Will you stay with Toby?’

She paused. ‘No.’

‘Here, then?’

Rachel looked around the gatehouse, standing empty. ‘I don’t think that would be much better than staying in the tower.’

‘Where, then, lass? I’d happily have you at mine, but I’ve only got one bedroom and the sofa’s a two-seater.’

Rachel smiled but refrained from telling him that she’d slept in far worse places in her time. ‘I’d be happy on the floor, Ron, if you can put up with me, but I’ll try to find an alternative that won’t put you out, if I can.’

Ron squeezed her hand, his face lined with more distress than Rachel had seen since Cullen’s funeral. ‘You stay as long as you need to, lass. I’ll not see you out on your ear any more than Cullen would.’

Rachel went back to the lighthouse to collect a few things and let Gilly know what was happening.

‘But – where are you going to go?’ Gilly asked, chewing at her lip, genuinely distressed. ‘I bet you’d be staying at Edie’s if it wasn’t for me, wouldn’t you?’

‘This isn’t your fault, Gilly,’ Rachel said. ‘And I’ll be fine at Ron’s.’

The girl stared at her for another second and then reached for the phone. Before Rachel knew what she was doing, she was talking to Ezra.

‘Gilly, there’s no—’

‘He says of course you can stay with him and why didn’t you ask straight away,’ Gilly said, the phone still at her ear. ‘He’s got a spare room, Rachel. You’d be daft to say no.’

Thirty-Four

‘I’m telling you, Ron,’ Gilly said, glancing around to make sure no one was listening, even though she and the old man were the only two people in the bookshop, ‘I’m right. All the fighting, all the animosity – it’s a smoke screen. They’re both in it up to their necks.’