In the letter she asked if Flors knew where Ella was.

Sighing, Mags wondered if she would ever see the day when all three were reunited, but she knew that whatever happened, she would visit Ella too, once she knew Ella’s whereabouts.

Sealing the envelope, she felt she could now deal with everything. She would put the house up for sale as it was, apart from the furniture in this suite – her much-loved pieces. These she would put into storage with her parents’ things until such time as she had her own home, which she would ask her solicitors to find for her and Beth, as she no longer wanted to stay in Scotland. She hadn’t been happy there since the fire, as Portpatrick held so many memories. And even though the boathouse was rebuilt, its ghostly past haunted her. No, she wanted above all things to restore the mill to its former glory.

With everything decided here, Mags set out to go to her solicitors to instruct them on the sale. While there, she would also instruct that Harold’s house in London be sold and she would pass the proceeds of that sale, together with the small amount of money in Harold’s own personal account, over to his children, Sibbie and Billy. It would go into a trust for them, where it would mature over the years to a nice fortune for them to share when Sibbie reached the age of twenty-two and Billy twenty-one.

She would match the sum raised at the time of the sale and put that into trust for Daisy, Florrie and Rosie. They would have a little less, there being three of them, but being girls, hopefully they wouldn’t need as much, just enough to give them some independence. For her own daughter, Beth, Mags had already set up a generous trust fund.

By the time Mags arrived back in Scotland there was already news of a buyer in the pipeline for her parents’ house and land. She was thrilled.

In answer to her solicitor’s letter telling her this, she again reiterated the minimum she would accept. She knew what she would need, in order to appease the bank and invest in the mill, as well as buy herself another house in the Blackburn area. Now, she just had to tell Betsy and Susan of her decisions, but that was a small hurdle. There was so much for her to get down to, once she had the capital.

‘Eeh, lass, you have been busy. But I don’t like that you’re going back. How am I to manage without you? Aw, I don’t mean financially or physically, but as a friend, whose allus been by me side?’

‘We will only be a phone call away, love. And I will visit often. Or, if you want, you can come and live back down there with me.’

‘Naw. Well, I’ve made me life here now, and I thought you had an’ all.’

‘I have – did – but all that has gone for me. You and Susan are doing very nicely with the business.’ She couldn’t bring herself to call it by its new name, Montel’s Arts and Crafts, given to it by Susan and Betsy to honour Montel. Although she had agreed, it was painful for her to think of it as that, with Montel not being there.