‘I’ll stop rabbiting,’ my ex-boyfriend says. ‘Otherwise it’ll go cold.’ Jake attacks the curls of potato with a spoon. ‘I thought some good, old-fashioned British stodge would make you feel glad to be back.’

I smile gratefully, even though I think it’s going to take an awful lot more than that.

Chapter sixty-eight

Chapter sixty-eight

‘Bloody hell,’ Edie says as she opens the door. ‘Look what the cat dragged in!’

We fall into each other’s arms and I try to hug the life out of my sister.

‘You smell like a yak,’ my sibling continues.

‘I do not,’ I insist. ‘I don’t look like one either, so don’t think of going there.’

‘You look fabulous,’ she says grudgingly, holding me away from her and running a critical eye over me. ‘Tanned and fit. And almost relaxed.’ Edie pulls me towards the kitchen. ‘I’ve been on pins. Why didn’t you let me know what time your flight landed, and I would have come to collect you.’

‘Someone did collect me.’

Edie’s eyebrows rise. ‘Pip?’

‘Pip?’ I shake my head. ‘No. Jake.’

‘Ooo.’

‘Ooo, indeed,’ I agree. ‘He’s split up with action woman and has moved back into the house.’

‘Fantastic!’

I’m taken aback. ‘Is it?’

Edie frowns at me. ‘I thought that’s what you wanted?’

‘So did I,’ I say. ‘A lot has happened in the last month.’

‘And I want to hear all about it,’ Edie tells me.

But then a shout goes up from behind me, ‘Aunty Lyssa!’ and I become a human totem pole as the majority of my nieces and nephews grab me by the legs and try to clamber up me.

‘Leave the poor woman alone,’ Edie instructs as they all ignore her.

‘We’ve mithed you,’ Daisy says, showering me with spittle now that her lisp is even more exaggerated due to the absence of two front teeth. She grins wider. ‘I fell off Liam’s skateboard,’ she says by way of explanation.

‘Tell her she can’t go on it again, Mum,’ my nephew pleads.

‘You can’t go on it again, Daisy,’ my sister obliges.

‘Aaww!’ Daisy acts as if this is the biggest tragedy of her life so far—as well it may be. There’ll come a time when she looks back on her past and wishes that she had nothing worse to worry about than restricted skateboard usage.

‘Go on, scoot,’ Edie says. ‘Aunty Lyssa and I have lots to talk about and it’s girly gossip, so we can’t do it with you lot in the way.’