“I’m sorry, Mum. I don’t know where I put it,” he called down from his room. Annie had sent him up to do another sweep to ensure the essential document hadn’t been overlooked.

She slapped her hands on her hips as she looked around the living room and shouted back to him. “It has to be somewhere, so go find it. We can’t go to Italy without it, Charlie. If you don’t find it, we aren’t going.”

“No!” her son shouted down from upstairs. “I’ll find it.”

Annie sighed. It had been a frantic morning already.

She’d overslept when her mobile phone battery had died during the night, and now this.

She flipped over another throw and stuffed her hand between the back of the seat and the cushion. Much to her relief, she felt something slim and leathery beneath her fingers and pulled it out.

There it was.

“Found it!” she called. Seconds later Charlie’s happy footsteps were heard rushing down the stairs and the sight of him instantly tempered the brewing storm inside her.

She’d been in rotten form all week, mostly due to the fact that the bank had—despite Annie’s pleas and Nick’s support—refused her loan application.

#GlamSquad, the salon, Annie’s pride and joy, and the business she’d spent the last four years pouring her life, her heart—and all of Felicity’s bequest—into, her entire livelihood, was finished.

This trip would be Annie O’Doherty’s last hurrah—her last-chance saloon.

If nothing else, the weekend in the sun would be a chance for Charlie to enjoy himself and be happy and carefree before life for them as a twosome changed utterly.

“Come here,” she called, her tone mellowing as she pulled her little giant into her arms and hugged him. “I didn’t mean to snap at you,” she apologized. “I’m just a little frazzled. We’re running late and I don’t want to miss the flight.”

“I know, Mum. It’s all right. I’m a big boy,” Charlie answered as he looked back at her with his trademark toothy grin. There were very few things that turned Annie’s heart to mush but her son’s smile was top of the list.

A knock on the door interrupted them.

“That must be Nick,” she announced. “Why don’t you take your backpack out to the car, and I’ll bring the rest of our stuff, OK?”

Charlie nodded and duly grabbed his bag from the floor, tossing it on his back before he ran for the door.

Annie took a deep breath. She was really going back to Italy.

Back to where it all began.

Chapter 49

Now

“Annie—over here!” she heard someone call out, as she and Charlie came through to the Arrivals terminal in Naples airport.