Thornbury was a pretty place with a traditional high street crammed with pubs, coffee shops, half-timber-framed buildings and double-fronted Victorian terraces painted in pinks, pale blues and the colour of clotted cream. She noted the groups of women chatting with a coffee in one hand while they rocked the handles of a buggy with the other, and how she envied them. Older men sat outside the pub nursing pints, having animated conversations. People raised their hands in greeting to friends and neighbours on the other side of the street and it felt nice to be among it, as if she could inhale the friendly atmosphere of the place and use it to help heal her broken self. What was it Reverend Pimm had said? ‘Put yourself back together and that’ll be your job for a while; take time to do it, let it be your preoccupation.’

Well, Thornbury felt as good a place as any to do just that. A small market town where people seemed neighbourly, a bit like her beloved Port Charles, which had for her become tainted. Digby had done that. Taken it from her.

Merrin shook thoughts of home from her thoughts and considered what Ruby would say about the place.

‘Bloody boring!’

And Bella?

‘Not a decent fella in sight.’

‘Possibly, but it’s not you who is thinking about staying here, it’s me.’ Her whispered response.

At Milbury Court she had found her niche. Hard work, a no-nonsense attitude to any crisis and a warm manner had clearly made her stand out to the Milbury Fortescue family.

It had felt like a lucky happenstance when, sitting in a coffee shop on the high street, exhausted, the wind knocked from her sails and mentally frail, she had opened the local paper and spied an advertisement: ‘Staff Wanted. Accommodation provided’. On that day, still reeling from her loss and riven with humiliation, she had parked in the shadow of the grand and daunting castle façade and tidied her hair. Then, drawing on every bit of courage she could muster, she had raised her trembling fist and knocked on the office door.

The first person she had called was her sister.

‘I just got myself a job.’ Her words sounded surreal; here she was, building a new life out of the rubble that remained of her confidence, trying to forge on physically when her heart yearned to be in the place she loved.

‘Well.’ There had been a long and awkward pause. ‘That’s that then. You really are staying away.’

‘I think—’

‘We know what you think, Merry, that you can do better without us around reminding you.’

‘It’s not that I think I can do better, it’s about what I need.’ Her voice had cracked; her sister’s suggestion that this was a glorious life choice was wounding.