‘Mum’s were, too. I can see her now, her hair piled up, encouraging us.’ She blinked away a tear.

‘I wish I’d known Nan.’ Daisy turned over a painting labelled “Christmas at The Cross in 1920”, looking odd without a single car cluttering the road but with plenty of room for a Christmas tree bedecked with silver chains and what looked like candles in jars. ‘Can I have this in my room?’

‘Of course,’ answered Rea. ‘We’ll frame it.’

Laurel nodded, warmed by Daisy wanting to forge a connection with the grandmother she’d never met. ‘We’ll buy a frame and I’ll mount it. I haven’t got a trade framer in this area yet. Finding one’s on my to-do list.’

‘Grady’s got a mate who’s got an art shop in Bettsbrough. Lots of people use him,’ Daisy volunteered, still flipping through the old paintings.

Laurel moved off to open a cardboard box, discovering inside a stack of old local newspapers. ‘Look at this lot! The top ones go back sixty years. I bet Mum rescued them from someone’s attic for the photos. You seem to have a lot to do with Grady, Daisy.’ She tagged the observation on casually because it was dawning on her that avoiding both Cassidy brothers might not be easy, judging by the comfortable manner Daisy exhibited with Grady and her friendship with Grady’s nephew, Niall.

Daisy nodded without looking up from her grandmother’s paintings. ‘He’s cool. Apart from Art December there’s going to be an art wall at Middledip Christmas Fair and he’s the organiser.’ She tilted her head. ‘Well, he says “co-ordinator” rather than “organiser”. So everyone books through him to exhibit their work on the art wall during the village fair or joins Art December, and sends him photos of their stuff for the Facebook group.’

‘Brilliant,’ said Laurel, pinning on a smile and resigning herself to the fact that returning to the village meant sharing it with the Cassidys – and perhaps other people she’d rather not encounter again, like Amie Blunt. It was possible that she’d have to tackle the school about Daisy’s bunking off in Rea’s stead and she hoped Mac Cassidy wouldn’t be her point of contact. ‘Art December’s the village art month, isn’t it? What’s happening?’

Daisy put the painting down while she explained. ‘Loads of people are displaying their work in their house windows for the whole month, with price tags, and I’m making a Google map so everyone can discover what’s on offer and then use their phones to guide them to it. The link will be posted on every local Facebook group we can think of.’

‘Daisy’s going to have my office window for her display,’ Rea popped in, emptying a cardboard box of paintings so she could use it as a bin for dried-up paint tubes.