Daisy was already back in the front passenger seat and Laurel hesitated, just for the instant it took for her to envisage doing exactly that. In her head she heard her best friend Fliss’s soft California tones. I accept the gravity of what happened to you, but hanging on to your negative feelings will only hurt you and prevent you from moving on. You’re not that hurt teenager, now, Laurel. You’re a strong woman. You’ve empowered yourself by learning self-defence and safety techniques. Fliss had delivered those sessions and Laurel had been a star student. But … she was also human and she drew out the moment as she pretended to deliberate.

In-her-head-Fliss added gently: Sometimes life doesn’t go the way you expected. You have to let go of what you once pictured and take joy in what you have.

Mac had struggled into the too-small Santa trousers behind the car and was now staring at her, the red felt hanging ludicrously at half-mast above his wet socks. Around them, the fine snow was dusting the hedge tops, outlining each bare twig.

Grady smiled at her, clearly not really thinking they were going to drive off. And he had once been her friend … She gestured towards her car. ‘Hop in the back. You’ll have to share the space with my shopping. The boot’s full.’ She’d only moved back to Middledip yesterday – Friday. She’d unloaded her personal things into her old room in The Nookery, where dormer window overlooked ploughed fields and lines of poplar trees, and her pictures had been crated and sent ahead, but her paints, brushes and easels still waited in the SUV’s capacious boot. There was no reason to share these details with the Cassidys though. Or how adrift she’d felt to leave Alex and their little blue house in West London after ten years – nine together, and one spent apart but living amicably under the same roof. Then Alex had acquired a girlfriend called Vonnie at the same time as he’d gone for trendier glasses and a hipster style to his brush-like brown hair; Laurel’s much-loved sister Rea, Daisy’s mum, had suffered an acceleration to her agoraphobia and then Daisy had begun uncharacteristic attempts at truanting. Laurel had known it was time to return to the village … like it or not. Hopefully, her absence would allow Alex to move on, maybe achieving with Vonnie what Laurel had been unable to provide. She remembered her last words to him. You’re a good guy, Alex Lasienko. Laurel’s infertility ending the love they’d known had not been his fault.

‘Thank you.’ The voices of the Cassidy brothers broke into her thoughts as she climbed into the car. Laurel brushed snow off herself and jumped back into the driver’s seat.