Yes, there is, but asking anything remotely resembling a favour won’t go down well with Alice. ‘What time do you need me in the office tomorrow?’ There’s something she wants to do on her way home and she would love the luxury of not having to rush back.

‘You’ll need to take Ty to the breakfast show interview in the morning.’ Alice casts a quick look in Darcy’s direction.

Darcy had already checked the schedule. ‘I thought Mel was taking him to that?’

‘I want you to take him,’ Alice snips. ‘That’s not a problem, is it?’

Darcy gives a quick shake of her head. ‘Of course not.’ There’s no point mentioning her personal life is falling apart. Personal time is a luxury she won’t have until this season is over.

Chapter 45

45

Miranda was seven when she lost her first tooth. Penny, only three at the time, had been jealous. She wanted to lose a tooth, she wanted the tooth fairy to visit her, she wanted the gap in her mouth like her big sister. Her mother told her that when she was seven she might lose a tooth too.

Years later, the day after Penny turned six, she lost her first tooth. The same thing happened with getting her tonsils out, the chicken pox, even getting her first period. Penny always did it a year earlier than Miranda had. It became a bit of a family joke, so much so that when Miranda broke her wrist at sixteen, they all laughed and said that when Penny was fifteen, she’d break one too.

And sure enough, weeks after Penelope had turned fifteen, she tripped over her school bag at lunch and broke her wrist.

So Penny had been ready. It had been six months since her last check-up when she’d been told she was all clear. But this time was going to be different. This time she was going to get the ‘I’m sorry, but there’s nothing we can do’ conversation. The same talk Miranda had received a year later in her life. The same talk their mother had received before her thirty-ninth birthday.

Both cancers had been referred to as aggressive. Penny had wondered at the time whether any cancer was considered peaceful or calm or even complacent. Cancer is, after all, cancer.

She was so ready that she didn’t even think she’d cry. She braced herself as the doctor settled into his seat and ran his hand over his salt and pepper hair. But then, when he delivered her results, Penny had cried. She’d sobbed and sobbed. All clear.

She’d escaped the cancer. How had that happened? Why had it taken Miranda and not her?

Two weeks later she met Ty.