‘See, I told you I had something up my sleeve,’ Harry said as they left Miles at the pub. ‘You think you can do it?’ he asked, as they walked in the direction of the office. She hadn’t seen him this fired up about a new business opportunity in a long time.

Laura knew she had to tell Harry she needed time to think about it. She had to talk to Nate first, make sure he was on board with what it meant, in terms of the extra work. She needed to make sure she was on board with it too. Turning down the opportunity meant she was effectively writing herself out of the game, but at the same time she didn’t see enough of her son as it was. ‘His timescales are pretty unrealistic,’ she eventually said.

‘Yeah. That’s the problem with Miles …’ Harry drifted off until he finally added, ‘He won’t budge. And if it isn’t us, he’ll take his money elsewhere. Quite frankly, it’s too much to lose.’ He stopped and turned to Laura. ‘I don’t need to tell you how good it would be for you to take it on. But I mean it when I say if you don’t think you can handle this right now, I completely understand. You’ve got enough on your plate, and I’ve got other people I can ask who don’t have babies they need to think of—’

‘No,’ she interrupted, knowing exactly who he’d have in mind. There was no way she was going to give this opportunity over to Mia Anderson. ‘I’ll do it.’

‘That’s my girl,’ he grinned and as they carried on walking back to the office, Laura tried to shut out the voices in her head that were screaming at her she’d done the wrong thing. They were asking her how the hell she thought she’d be able to break this to Nate.

Chapter Twenty-One

Four weeks before the fire

On Thursday night, with no school clubs to attend, Janie made the last-minute decision to take the girls to the quay for hot chocolates on the way home. Now she was watching as they dropped crab-lines, bacon clinging to the ends of them, over the side and into the water. They hadn’t meant to stay long, but when they had passed the gift shop Lottie had seen the crab-nets and begged her to buy them.