Her coffee arrived, a tiny biscuit nestling in the accompanying teaspoon and a generous serve of slice on a plate. “Thank you,” she said as the waitress whipped away to serve another customer. It wasn’t quite ten o’clock so the early-morning coffee rush was over and the mid-morning partakers not yet arrived.

Natalie found herself itching to get back to the property again, knowing her girls were all there together. Giving herself space had been a good thing. The concerns that had been stirred about Milt’s past with Veronica had eased. Laura had kept her filled in on events at home, and evidently Jack had been for a meal again, but here, with only her parents in need of her – and they asked for little – Natalie had been able to put the events of the last week into perspective, of sorts.

It had been a shock to go through the tests for breast cancer and then another shock to find Veronica in Milt’s arms, but she’d replayed it a million times and had decided it was as Milt had said. He couldn’t ignore Veronica in her time of need. Natalie had convinced herself her fear that Milt and Veronica had kept in touch behind her back was ridiculous and had made the decision to believe Jack couldn’t be Milt’s son. It was the only way to keep her family and her sanity intact. She sometimes thought about her life as being in two parts, pre and post glitch. Maybe now she could add a new branch and call it before and after the anomaly. It was as if a curtain had been drawn to reveal a new scene, one in which she wasn’t sure she knew herself.

“BA and AA.” She pressed her fingers to her lips and glanced around but no-one had noticed her talking to herself.

She took a sip of her coffee and pushed her absurd thoughts away. Instead she pictured home and her husband and wondered what he was thinking of her time away. Their conversations had been brief while she’d been in Victor. Since they’d first been together they’d spent so little time apart that phone calls, other than requests to collect something or messages regarding their whereabouts, were rare, and so Natalie found it difficult to gauge Milt’s mood from his stiff tone and getting information was like pulling hen’s teeth. He’d muttered something about his mother and Connie but said he was dealing with it.

It worried Natalie to think Connie could want to take more from the property than she’d already received but it was best sorted between mother and son. As long as Natalie’s girls didn’t lose out, and if that looked likely she’d put up a fight. She’d mentioned taking a holiday again to Milt but that had been met with more grumbles.