‘I have some news. Jack and I have set a date for our wedding. It’s next July.’

‘Oh, how lovely,’ Faith said. It was a brave step for Ella, considering that her mother was testament to how a marriage could fail, and Faith wasn’t exactly a good advert either. She wished her well.

‘It’s only going to be a small affair, but we would love it if you would come.’

‘I wouldn’t miss it.’

‘I’ll hold you to that,’ said Ella.

Faith couldn’t think of anything worse than an intimate wedding breakfast where Rosemary would deliver the speech in the stead of the father of the bride. Glancing at the travel brochure resting on the edge of the bath, she wondered if the wedding was the justification she needed for one last escape.

She yawned again. ‘Sorry.’

‘Before I let you go, there’s something else I wanted to run past you.’

Reaching for her wine, Faith had an inkling she was going to need it. She should have known there was an ulterior motive for the call. ‘Shoot,’ she said.

‘Last time I saw you, when you were having a clear-out, we talked about you making a fresh start,’ Ella said. She paused for her stepmother to agree, but Faith remained tight-lipped. Only one of them had mentioned a fresh start. ‘I know it’s a difficult decision, but I was talking to Jack, and we wondered if it would be less of a wrench if I was the buyer?’

‘Why on earth would you want to come back here, Ella? You hated your father,’ Faith said, suspecting Rosemary was the true architect of this plan. She wanted the house back, and she had no qualms about using Ella as her puppet.

‘I don’t hate him,’ Ella said softly.

Despite her annoyance, Faith smiled at the lie that had been delivered without conviction. Ella would have to do some serious backtracking to explain away the years of scorn she had poured over her father’s memory.

‘I had a happy childhood there before I went off to uni,’ she said. ‘And up until he dumped Mum, I thought Dad was a good dad. Who knows? Being back home might help me remember him in a better light.’

Faith almost choked on her wine. Rosemary would turn in her grave, if only she had one. ‘Anything’s possible.’

‘And wouldn’t it make life easier for you? Why pay for the upkeep of a house when you use only a fraction of it?’

Faith could almost admire Rosemary. She hadn’t missed a trick. She had heard about the furniture sale and now the gardening, not to mention the car that hadn’t been updated in over a year. She had picked up on all the signs that money was tight, and this was the argument she had told her daughter to use.

‘And you think you can afford a house like this?’