Mary Kate shook her head. ‘I haven’t. I’m starving.’ She hadn’t felt hunger since the day Nicholas had died. A deep, dull ache had lodged in her belly, supressing all thoughts of food.

A beam spread across Bee’s face. ‘Well now, listen, isn’t that a good sign. I want you to tell me all about it, I know it must have been an awful time you’ve had, but I don’t think after a long journey is the right time to be going over everything. You need to get your bearings first, and besides, who can talk sense on an empty belly?’ She squeezed Mary Kate’s hand. ‘I’ll go and slice a few rashers in the shop for you. I’ll be just a minute.’

Mary Kate finished her tea and heard the bacon slicer grind into life. She rose and picked up her case. While Bee was frying the rashers, she would go upstairs and unpack some of her things into her room. She wanted to sit on her bed, look out of her window, feel and see the familiar things that she could tell were already weaving their magic. For the first time in many months she felt as though her heart was beating at a normal and steady rhythm.

Her feet echoed on the wooden stairs and for a fleeting second she was reminded of the plush wall-to-wall Axminster carpet on the stairs in Duke’s Avenue. Carpet, along with a million other modern necessities that were routine in Liverpool homes, was yet to reach Tarabeg, and that felt good to her. Change was not something she wanted Tarabeg to be tainted with.

The image fled from her mind as she caught sight of her bedroom door. She breathed a deep sigh of contentment. This would be her safe place. Even within her own home, there was a further sanctuary, the bedroom of her childhood. The suitcase banged against the side of her leg as she clattered along the wooden floor of the landing. She pushed at the door and was about to walk in, but gasped and remained frozen on the threshold, unable to move.

The wardrobe door stood open and in it hung clothes that weren’t hers. The bed was messy and had a dress flung across it, and a pair of worn slippers had been shoved against the wall.

‘Mary Kate! Mary Kate!’

She could barely breathe.

Within seconds, a panting Bee was at the door beside her. ‘’Tis Peggy,’ she said. ‘You won’t be able to stay here. Peggy moved in when you moved out two years ago.’

The tears arrived with only the faintest tremble of her bottom lip as a warning and there was no time, as had so often been the case since Nicholas had died, to hold them in check. The home she had held onto in her mind during every moment of the journey from Liverpool was no longer hers. Someone had taken her place. She didn’t even have that to call her own.