Dad had moved me from my childhood home in the Scottish borders just a few months after we lost Mum. He was mad on Christmas, always had been, and when the opportunity to buy the plantation and site, which had never been properly utilised by its previous owner came up, he had jumped at the chance.

‘It’s the fresh start we need, Liza,’ he had told me as he loaded up boxes and bags into the moving van. ‘It’s what your mum would have wanted us to do.’

But I didn’t want a fresh start. I wanted to stay living in the house that was full of Mum, snuggle down in the bedroom where she used to read me bedtime stories, stay with my friends as we settled into the new routine of high school. Dad might have been, but I wasn’t ready to leave any part of my mum behind.

‘You’ll soon settle in,’ he had said, sounding optimistic and almost cheerful.

I resented him for that and if I was being brutally honest with myself, I don’t think I had ever stopped. In reclaiming his life, he had removed me from everything that I held dear. If I had found the words to explain that to David, then he would have understood why my feelings for Wynter’s Trees were never going to change, rather than clinging to the hope that one day I’d have this magical epiphany and move back.

Striving to find the courage to speak up, along with the words, the memories flooded in. I bitterly remembered all too vividly how, as the plantation became popular and I resigned myself to it, the new school bully realised it gave her all the ammunition she needed to single me out.

The ridicule and name calling had been incessant and I had hated Wynter’s all over again. At eighteen, I couldn’t wait to head back north to university and, aside from the day of Dad’s funeral, I hadn’t been back to Wynmouth since.

‘But you rarely respond to my emails,’ David fairly pointed out. ‘In fact, if it wasn’t for the end of year books, I don’t think you’d have a clue about how the place is doing at all.’

‘I’m not that bad,’ I said, trying to play it off, even though I knew he was right.

‘In that case,’ David shot back, ‘you know what I’m ringing to discuss, don’t you? You know exactly what it is I’ve been making multiple calls to talk to you about.’

I had assumed it was the usual, me going back to Wynter’s for Christmas, but his tone suggested otherwise.

‘Well,’ I said, craftily switching the call to speaker so I could access my emails and carry on with the conversation. ‘It could be any number of things,’ I blagged, furiously scrolling. ‘There’s the health of the trees…’