But no, Gina wasn’t really mad … was she? She’d always been naughty and wilful, but that wasn’t at all the same as being insane. She could be cruel and envious and bitter, too, but that was just her character, not insanity. Ellen loved her sister and would do anything she could to make things right about the stolen items, but she had to acknowledge she sometimes didn’t really like her very much.

Just the morning to get through and then she’d go and see Edward and his parents and tell them what little she knew before they heard a different version that had circulated three times round the village until it was unrecognisable as the truth.

Gina woke up in a comfy bed with beautifully laundered sheets on the Saturday morning and lay thinking about all that had happened the previous day. It had been quite exhausting and for a few moments she wondered if she had imagined some of it. But no, this quiet little hotel room was real enough.

She went to the window and opened it. She couldn’t see the sea but she could smell that lovely sea smell that she’d remarked on to James the first time he’d taken her to Blackpool. Now Blackpool was just up the coast and she had a decision to make. Should she take the stolen jewellery to Bella, as James had asked, or should she stay here and be Diana Thornton, orphan from Skipton, at least for the time being? Being Diana Thornton bought her some time to think things through, and after all, James had made no arrangement to come to find her.

The more Gina thought about James, the angrier she felt. He had not cared that she’d lost her position at the Hall, lost the trust of her employers – and probably everyone else by now – not cared about her at all. He’d done a runner and sacrificed her to try to save what he could of the stolen items not at his home in London. He’d got in a panic and had got her into a panic, and now they were both on the run.

On the run from the police! How quickly that had happened!