‘Give yourself a break,’ Toby said, taking her restless hands between his. ‘It’d be a lot to deal with, even without everything else you’ve been coping with recently.’

‘I didn’t tell Alan about what we’ve discovered,’ Rachel said. ‘About Eveline, I mean. Perhaps I should have.’

‘You can always call him back,’ Toby said. ‘Just take a breath for a minute or two.’

Rachel nodded, staring at nothing.

‘It’s nice to see Gilly downstairs,’ Toby said. ‘She looks the happiest I’ve seen her since I’ve known her.’

‘Have you heard the latest?’ Rachel asked. ‘Edie’s taken her in.’

‘Edie?’

‘Ssh,’ Rachel laughed. ‘Yes! She’d been sleeping in her garden shed, would you believe it. Edie found out and gave Gilly her spare room.’

‘Well. That really is a turn-up. I wonder how long that’ll last before they kill each other?’

‘A long time, I hope. I think they’ll be good for each other. I think they have been already, actually, though neither would admit it. Edie was making comments about Gilly going to college yesterday.’

‘That would be a good outcome.’

Rachel sobered. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It would be good to have at least one of those.’

‘Listen,’ Toby said, ‘It might do you good to get out of the village for a few hours, don’t you think? Why don’t you let me take you out somewhere this weekend?’

Twenty-Six

Gilly had figured out how the bookshop worked pretty quickly. Mostly it was just about putting up with the customers. The regulars were fine, but there had been several times that Gilly had made herself bite her lip instead of telling people where to get off with their snooty attitudes and habit of looking down their noses at her as if she had no business being in a bookshop. She had no intention of screwing this job up while it lasted, though. If she could get a good reference from Rachel, it might help her get another job elsewhere. A permanent one, one that would mean she could pay Edie proper rent. Staying with the artist had so far been easier than she’d thought it would be, and if she could persuade Edie to let her stay… well, then all of Gilly’s problems would be over. Three years and she could stop looking over her shoulder. Everything would come up roses.

She should have known, of course, that nothing in this life could possibly be that simple.

It started when Gilly printed her first image on the press. It had taken her ages to carve out the block. Every time she’d begun to rush, eager to move onto the next stage, Edie had made her stop for the evening.

‘Slow down,’ she’d say, every time. ‘Think about what you’re doing. The end result will be better for it.’

Eventually, though, Gilly had got there. The telegraph pole she’d seen all those weeks before, its electrical lines radiating out like the spokes of a bike wheel, was now an image that Gilly herself had cut out with a spare set of Edie’s carving tools and a lot of concentration.