Also by Susan Lewis

Fiction

A Class Apart

Dance While You Can

Stolen Beginnings

Darkest Longings

Obsession

Vengeance

Summer Madness

Last Resort

Wildfire

Cruel Venus

Strange Allure

The Mill House

A French Affair

Missing

Out of the Shadows

Lost Innocence

The Choice

Forgotten

Stolen

No Turning Back

Losing You

The Truth About You

Never Say Goodbye

Too Close to Home

No Place to Hide

Books that run in sequence

Chasing Dreams

Taking Chances

No Child of Mine

Don’t Let Me Go

You Said Forever

Series featuring Detective Andee Lawrence

Behind Closed Doors

The Girl Who Came Back

The Moment She Left

Hiding in Plain Sight

Series featuring Laurie Forbes and Elliott Russell

Silent Truths

Wicked Beauty

Intimate Strangers

The Hornbeam Tree

Memoir

Just One More Day

One Day at a Time

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Epub ISBN: 9781473537682

Version 1.0

Published by Century 2018

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Copyright © Susan Lewis Ltd 2018

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Susan Lewis has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Century

Century
The Penguin Random House Group Limited
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www.penguin.co.uk

Century is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 9781780896083

Daniel Marks was standing in the corner of the room watching and listening. He didn’t understand what was happening, why people were shouting and being rough with his dad. They shouldn’t be here. It was his birthday. He was ten today and he was having a party. All his friends were coming, Nicholas and Jeremy and Thomas and Carl. He’d invited some girls too, Peggy, Jolene and Pearl. His dad had bought special things for them to eat, and there was a cake on the table with candles ready to blow out.

They were still shouting. Everyone was so big. They were filling up the room and no one seemed to know he was there.

‘Patrick Marks, I am arresting you …’

‘You’re making a mistake,’ his dad cried out, looking more afraid than Daniel had ever seen him.

Daniel wanted to scream, bang his fists against them and make them go away, but he just stood where he was, too scared to move.

There were some handcuffs now, and they were trying to put them on his dad, but his dad pushed them away. ‘I need to speak to my son,’ he growled. ‘Can’t I just do that?’

Someone put out a hand to stop him, but someone else pushed the hand away.

His dad came to crouch to his level and held his shoulders, his fingers digging into Daniel’s fragile bones. There was a pale, thin line around his mouth; his dark eyes were still frightened. ‘It’ll be all right, son,’ he whispered, seeming to choke on the words. ‘They’ve got the wrong person. Do you hear me?’

Daniel nodded.

His dad took a breath, and then another. His eyes were moist and desperate. ‘I want you to remember,’ he said, ‘that no matter what they do to me, or say about me, I’ve never done anything wrong, or to be ashamed of. OK?’

Daniel nodded again, and sobbed as his dad’s strong arms pulled him close and held him tight. He could smell the caramel and woody scent of him; feel his tears in his hair.

‘You need to be brave,’ Marks whispered roughly. ‘Can you be brave?’

Daniel knew he couldn’t, but if he said no it was going to upset his dad more so he made himself whisper a yes.

‘I love you, son,’ Marks gasped, still holding him tightly. ‘Never forget that. I want you to do your best in every way you can, OK? And don’t ever believe what they tell you, because I swear on your mother’s grave, they’ve got the wrong man.’

Chapter One

Today, forty years after the Emmett family – two brothers married to two sisters – had made the neglected sprawl of Ash Morley Farm into a home, it remained as quaintly rustic as ever, albeit in a less reproductive, and definitely more inviting way. It still comprised four honey stone properties of varying sizes – a rambling old farmhouse, a grand barn with dovecotes and arrow slits, some stables and a bakery. The small enclave shared an uneven cobbled courtyard where hay carts, cattle, sheep and tractors used to rumble about their days. Now, in this similar setting, stood a milkmaid fountain at the centre of things, with a giant weeping willow beside it, and two cherry trees and a number of year-round flower beds spread randomly about.

Leanne had loved growing up here, mainly because her friends had been so keen to visit – often their parents came too. Life was always fun at Ash Morley. Wilkie and Glory – Leanne’s mother and aunt – were legendary entertainers, and had encouraged all sorts of adventures for the young ones, while providing such scrummy picnics for everyone that Leanne’s father and uncle used to playfully grumble that the sisters were stealing business from their thriving seafront restaurant in town.

By the time Leanne reached eighteen she’d been more than ready to break out and start living life to the full. She’d won a place at the London College of Contemporary Arts and was so excited to be off that she hadn’t given her parents’ distress at losing her a second thought.

Now, twenty-four years later, she was back, an older, and not necessarily wiser woman doing her best to start a new life. Though Wilkie, her mother, still lived in the farmhouse, her father had died five years ago, and her Aunt Glory had succumbed to cancer recently enough for the grief still to be raw. Glory, who’d never had any children, had willed the barn and her share of the rest of Ash Morley to Leanne.

Leanne still missed her father and aunt terribly, almost as much as she missed her elder daughter Kate.

Kate. What a mix of emotions flooded her just to picture Kate’s beautiful face, or to think of where she might be and what she was doing now.

And then there was Abby, her youngest …

‘You didn’t answer my question,’ Wilkie chided, going to put on the kettle, as at home in the barn as she was in the farmhouse.

‘Sorry, I missed what you said,’ Leanne replied, shrugging off her coat.

‘I asked if you’d treated yourself to something lovely,’ Wilkie repeated.

Leanne glanced at the bags she’d brought in from the car: Next, Top Shop, Zara. What was in them, for heaven’s sake? ‘Not really,’ she said vaguely, ‘it’s mostly for Abby.’

Wilkie sighed and planted her hands on her plump little hips. Nature couldn’t have made mother and daughter less alike if it had tried, for Wilkie with her lusciously curvy figure and bright orange hair stood no higher than five feet two in heels. Leanne, on the other hand, was tall, like her father, with long slender legs, boyish hips and an abundance of honey-coloured curls.

‘There’s nothing wrong with indulging yourself once in a while,’ Wilkie reminded her.

Leanne didn’t argue, because she agreed. However, these days she was quite happy in jeans and a sweater, or occasionally a dress from Glory Days, the vintage shop in town that she’d also inherited from her aunt.

There was a time when her wardrobe had overflowed with silks and satins, glittering tops and impossible shoes. She’d had real diamonds for her fingers and ears; her hair had been styled and highlighted to perfection, and her skin had always shone with as much happiness as health. Today, when she looked in the mirror, she saw a kind of bad watercolour of herself, blurred about the edges, no longer defined as a confident, capable woman, more like someone who’d been left out in the rain. More often than not she wore her glorious hair scraped back from her pale, heart-shaped face, and she no longer accentuated the lengthy lashes around her blue, almond-shaped eyes, or added colour to her lips or cheeks. According to her mother this ghostly image made her look young and vulnerable, and rather like the heroine of a nineteenth-century novel. Since Leanne was forty-three, and felt about as romantic as a pair of baggy tights, she could only conclude that she wasn’t presenting an accurate picture of her true self to the world.

In fact, she knew she wasn’t, but why should anyone else have to deal with the cauldron of conflicting emotions fermenting away inside her? Talking about Jack, even thinking about him, would be like poking a hornets’ nest, and once all those dreadful feelings were unleashed how was she ever going to get them back under control? They’d die away of their own accord given time, she was in no doubt of that. She already felt infinitely better than she had a year ago, when the world as she’d known it had been thrown off its axis in a way she should have seen coming, but hadn’t.

Wilkie, in her perennially childlike and mischievous way, had dipped into one of the bags and was trying on a pink beret. ‘What do you think?’ she asked, admiring her reflection in a sunburst mirror hanging from a hook on Glory’s old oak dresser. She tweaked her fluffy hair and pouted her sixty-something lips like a sixty-something model.

‘You look gorgeous,’ Leanne smiled.

Wilkie’s eyes shone, showing she knew Leanne wasn’t serious. ‘Glory always looked good in pink,’ she sighed, taking the hat off, ‘but Glory could wear anything and still look like a film star.’ Her sunny blue eyes misted for a moment. ‘You and Kate are the same,’ she declared cheerfully, ‘and hopefully Abby will be too when she’s older, although she’s not as tall as you were at fourteen.’

‘There’s still plenty of time,’ Leanne replied, ‘and being tall isn’t everything. I mean, look at you, you’re an absolute dazzler, and not having your feet reach the floor when you sit down has never been a problem for you.’

Wilkie’s laugh was as deliciously infectious as it had always been, and rippled through Leanne’s heart in a way that made her feel a little like a child again. ‘Dad used to say he could put me in his pocket if it rained,’ Wilkie recalled wistfully.

Though Leanne had heard it many times before, she still went to hug her mother. Having Leanne and Abby at Ash Morley went some way to making up for the loss of her sister and husband, but not all the way.

‘OK, let’s not get sentimental,’ Wilkie scolded herself, ‘I was making tea. Oh, is that mine or yours?’

‘Yours,’ Leanne replied, passing over the iPhone that Wilkie was as addicted to as any teenager.

While her mother chatted away with one of her many friends from Kesterly’s Welcome Centre, or maybe it was a fellow activist from the town’s Better Community Group – with Wilkie it could be anyone from any number of organisations – Leanne reached two mugs down from the dresser and continued with the tea. The Aga was, as usual, making the large oak-beamed kitchen space at this end of the barn feel as cosy as a nest, while the earthy yet citrusy smell that had always tanged the air here, no matter what the season, could so easily carry her back to her childhood.

She took a sip of Earl Grey and turned her gaze to the high vaulted ceilings that ran from the kitchen along the length of the barn. On the far wall was a double-fronted wood-burning stove in the enormous oak and stone fireplace. In between was Glory’s flamboyantly eclectic collection of sofas, chaises longues, footstools, oriental rugs and art deco lampstands. There was also a magnificent refectory table between the kitchen and sitting room large enough to seat twelve or fourteen with a quirky collection of spindle-back chairs, not one of which matched another.

The entire east-facing wall consisted of three sets of double French doors that, when open, made the veranda outside with its red tiled roof and wooden pillars seem almost as much a part of the barn’s interior as it was a part of the garden. The view was of Ash Morley’s gardens with their rugged lawns and vegetable beds, a couple of whirling washing lines, a netted trampoline, a see-saw swing, and a spring-flower meadow beyond that rambled and flowed into a swathe of green fields all the way out to Kesterly golf course in the far distance, and the lower slopes of Exmoor National Park to the sunnier south.

‘Everything sorted?’ Leanne asked as her mother rang off.

‘I think so, but I’ll have to be going soon. We’ve got a meeting at the tourist office at four to start sorting out the summer brochures.’

‘It’s still only January,’ Leanne laughed.

‘We like to keep on top of things. Now tell me, what are we going to do about Abby?’

Leanne inwardly groaned. It was a question she was constantly asking herself, and she never seemed to come any closer to an answer. ‘Counselling obviously hasn’t done the trick,’ she stated dismally, ‘or not where I’m concerned. She’s fine with everyone else, especially you. Apparently I’m public enemy number one, because nothing I do is right.’

Wilkie looked thoughtful and perplexed. ‘Maybe we rushed into the counselling,’ she said. ‘The poor girl barely had time to breathe after it all happened, and suddenly there she was being straightened out before we even knew what the kinks really were.’

‘You’re right,’ Leanne responded, ‘it probably was too soon. The trouble is, I don’t think I’ll have much luck getting her to see someone again. She’s adamant that she’s fine, and the counsellor’s conclusion was that she was adjusting well.’

Wilkie frowned sceptically. ‘There are good counsellors and not so good counsellors,’ she murmured darkly.

Wasn’t that the truth? ‘Frankly, I don’t think there’s anyone better than you,’ Leanne declared, meaning it. Her mother had a truly compassionate nature, making her, as far as Leanne was concerned, the easiest person in the world to talk to.

‘Well, we know I’ve tried, more than once, and I’m going to say it again, for all her hostility towards you and love for me, it’s you she really wants to reach out to her.’

‘And every time I hold out a hand I feel like one of us ends up going over a cliff.’ Leanne sighed wearily. ‘So what do we do?’

Wilkie shook her head. ‘Round and round in circles,’ she murmured, glancing at her watch. ‘I have to go, I’m afraid, but I’ll be back in time for dinner. I’ve left the slow cooker on. Klaudia and the children are coming,’ she added, referring to the rest of the Ash Morley ‘family’, who’d lived in the converted stables for the past six years. ‘If you need me I’ll have my phone with me.’

As the back door closed behind her a waft of wintry air thrust itself in from outside and hung about the kitchen like a shivering ghost. Leanne quickly went to make sure the outer porch door had held fast, since it had lately formed a habit of throwing itself wide to feisty winds.

Satisfied it was secure, she returned to the kitchen and tried to collect her thoughts. Since it was half-day closing at the shop she should spend the next hour or so checking Internet orders and customer service requests, so setting up her laptop on the table, she went to the dresser to collect the mail she’d brought in just now. As she flicked through it she found her eyes drawn to her aunt’s photo as though it were demanding her attention, and as she gazed down at it she felt submerged by a wave of love and longing. Glory’s eyes had always sparkled, almost to the last, and nature had shaped her lips in a smile so that she’d never looked sad, even when she’d felt it, and she must have at times. Losing her husband when still in her thirties had hit her hard. Leanne had few memories of him, having been so young when he’d died in a boating accident, but she knew he was the reason Glory had remained single and childless right up to the age of fifty, when she’d decided to start fostering. What a blessing that had turned into for both her and Wilkie, especially after the coronary that had taken Leanne’s father. A constant flow of young people coming in and out of Ash Morley, with all their problems, attitude and love, had made the sisters’ world feel worthwhile again.

‘We miss you,’ Leanne whispered to her aunt’s photo. ‘You kept us all grounded in your own crazy way and now I’m not very sure where we are.’

‘Oh now,’ she could hear Glory saying, ‘you will live and love again, my angel. You’re not broken, only bruised.’

It was true, she wasn’t broken. What had happened to Jack had shaken her badly, had ended up changing her life, but it hadn’t torn her apart in the way many – Jack’s mother for instance – felt it should have. And therein lay the cause of Leanne’s conflicted emotions. How guilty should she be feeling about his death? Where exactly did her responsibility begin or end? Could she have prevented it? Would she have tried if she’d known what he was going to do? Yes, of course she would, except the fact that she was asking herself the question …

She’d never forget the moment she’d opened the door to his study and come face to face with the gruesome sight of him staring back at her, eyes protruding from their sockets, tongue jutting from purple mouth. For one bewildering moment it had almost seemed like a prank. She hadn’t laughed, but she might have screamed. She remembered registering the smell of urine and worse, before staggering out of the room and quickly locking the door before Abby could see her father that way. It was an image no child should ever have to live with.

The police had found the note, but hadn’t shown it to Leanne until later in the day. ‘You can make up your mind whether you want your daughter to see it,’ the female officer had said gently. ‘It’s addressed to you.’

Leanne had taken it up to her room and sat with it for a long time before feeling able to read it. She’d known, even before her eyes took in the words and they began to gouge their cruelty into her heart, that Jack would be blaming her for his actions. But even then, traumatised as she’d felt by the shock of it, she’d already made up her mind that she wouldn’t allow him to have the final word, much less that sort of devastating power over her. The decision to do this terrible thing had been his, and his alone.

The sarcasm in those three words had made her wince.

Though the terrible sadness of someone dying with so much anger in his heart had racked her own, Leanne’s conscience had held firm. She knew how hard she’d tried to reach him, how she’d sacrificed her own happiness in the hope of restoring his, and how hard she’d fought to protect Abby from the worst of him. She’d never have said that she was glad he was dead, but there was no stopping the relief of knowing that the fight was over. It wasn’t until later, much later, that she’d fully registered the fact that he’d left nothing for Abby, no attempt at an apology, no plea for understanding, nor a single word of love.

‘I don’t want anything,’ Abby had told her vehemently, her young teenage face white and pinched with shock and anger. ‘He’s gone and nothing’s going to change that.’

With Aunt Glory being so sick at the time and needing Wilkie, it was Kate who’d come to help Leanne and Abby through the worst of it. Kate, her beautiful, capable older daughter, had flown back from the States to be with her mother and half-sister, understanding far more than they had how much they’d needed her. Such young shoulders – she was still only twenty – yet she’d coped in a way that had made her seem so much older. It was she who’d held Leanne’s hand when the lawyer had broken the worst of it. The house was mortgaged for more than its value, the cars were on a no-return lease with two years of monthly payments still to be met, even the joint investments and Abby’s university fund had gone. Things had been far worse for Jack than he’d ever let on. The vicious circle of drinking to escape the reality of his sinking career, and the addiction making him incapable of work, impossible to cast, had pushed him to even greater depths of anger and depression. In the end it had sucked him into a vortex of inescapable despair.

Maybe she hadn’t done enough, she remembered thinking at the time. They’d been together for fifteen years, they had Abby, so why hadn’t she found a way to turn him back into the man she’d once loved?

‘Because that wasn’t what he wanted,’ Kate had told her gently. ‘He never tried to help himself, not once. I even used to think that there was a part of him, actually almost all of him by the end, that enjoyed wallowing in booze and self-pity and all that rage he had towards the world. He couldn’t see anyone else, couldn’t even think about anyone but himself. I’m sorry, Mum, I know you probably don’t want to hear it right now, but in your heart you know it’s the truth.’

Leanne had known it, and for a long time, but her battle with his drinking, her tireless efforts to make him seek help, had only inflamed him to even harsher degrees of fury and blame. Until in the end she’d stopped, accepting that he had become a stranger, only connected to the man she’d once known by the familiar, though now swollen and ravaged, features, and his name.

She’d met him when Kate was five years old. He’d literally swept her off her feet with his charm, his looks, and she had to admit to being impressed by his fame. The acclaimed actor whose powerful performances on stage and screen had made him one of the nation’s favourites was madly in love with her, the lowly assistant manager of a second-rate art gallery in Knightsbridge. He’d been great with Kate then, in fact he’d loved the whole world, and why not when the whole world seemed to love him? It was true he’d drunk a lot, had been known as a generous host, the life and soul of any party, and many were the times when she’d had to leave him on the stairs, unable to get him up to their room. He’d always laugh it off in the morning, as though she’d fallen for some elaborate prank, and because he’d still seemed able to handle his professional life she had tried to believe that he had it all under control. To suggest otherwise never ended well.

Then Abby had come along, and though he had been a loving and attentive father for the first few years – to Abby much more than to Kate – everything had started to change when his work began drying up. His problem had reached a level where he could no longer be relied on to turn up on time, much less to remember his lines. No one wanted to cast him, or not in roles he considered suitable for an actor of his standing. To make matters worse, it was around the same time that Kate’s father’s career in financial planning had seemed to take off.

Jack had always felt threatened by Martin. He hated the fact that Leanne had remained on good terms with a man she’d divorced; he’d never felt it was natural. Over time Leanne had come to realise that if her break-up with Martin had been acrimonious, preferably to the point of murderous, Jack would probably have handled things better. But it hadn’t been like that. She and Martin had been very young when they’d met, still only eighteen, and by the time they were twenty they were married with Kate on the way. After she was born it had been idyllic for a while, but they’d soon realised that in spite of how much they loved her, and one another, they wanted different things from life. Martin, being American, was eager to return to the States while Leanne didn’t want to leave London. It was far enough from her parents and Glory; she just couldn’t bring herself to go any further.

In the end they’d agreed to set one another free with an arrangement for Kate to spend part of her summer holidays with her father each year, and alternate Christmases, so that he wouldn’t miss out on her altogether.

It was when Jack had learned of Martin’s success that his attitude towards Kate became borderline abusive. Not that he ever hit her – in spite of everything he’d never raised a hand to any of them – but his sneering bitterness towards Kate’s father had been so ugly that when Kate, at the age of fifteen, had said she wanted to go and live with Martin and his family in Carmel, Indiana, Leanne hadn’t tried to stop her. Of course she was devastated by the decision, wretched beyond bearing, but loving her daughter as much as she did, why would she want her to go on suffering the way she was when she didn’t have to?

Sighing at the unpleasant memories that had swamped her for a while, Leanne put down the mail and went to pour herself some more tea. She really wasn’t making a great success of her life, was she? A failed marriage by the time she was twenty-three; a second husband who’d turned into a drunk and ended up killing himself; a daughter who’d left home to live with her father and another who could hardly stand the sight of her.

‘Hey! What gives?’

Startled as much by the fact that she hadn’t heard Abby come in as the surprise of being spoken to in what could possibly be considered a friendly way, Leanne raised her mug. ‘Fancy one?’ she asked.

Abby’s head was down, her long dark hair partly masking the phone she was holding. In spite of the freezing temperature outside, her padded coat was open, her scarf was awry and her hands looked bitten red by cold.

‘I said, do you want some tea?’ Leanne asked again.

She might as well have saved her breath. Abby was stuck into whatever she was doing on the phone, which was presumably some sort of interactive game since Leanne had belatedly spotted the earbuds.

Putting down her mug, Leanne decided to abandon her paperwork for now and reached for Glory’s treasured acacia-wood chopping board. Leanne had given it to her for Christmas about ten years ago, and every month since then Glory had lovingly oiled and conditioned it, preserving its beauty and integrity, showing it the same tender respect she had for just about everything anyone had ever given her, especially her darling niece. There were still books of pressed flowers in the attic, including the first bunch Leanne had ever picked for her, aged four. Every card Uncle Keith had given her was in a black velvet box tied with blue ribbon, and every other card she’d received over the years was in another, bigger box that Leanne herself had closed after adding the many condolences that had poured in at the time of her aunt’s funeral.

What was Leanne going to do with it all? There was so much of her aunt in this place, from the books, to the sofa throws, the wall hangings and display cabinets full of quaint and mysterious artefacts from down the years, that Leanne would never find the heart to part with it all. And of course there were Glory’s treasured clothes in the wardrobe upstairs, including the exquisite 1920s wedding gown, an original that she’d asked Leanne and Wilkie to take to her at the hospice just before she’d died. They’d wondered afterwards whether they should have cremated her in it, but since she hadn’t requested it they’d chosen a favoured silver silk flapper dress with matching headband instead.

Everything in this glorious homage to the early twentieth century felt so special that Leanne had more or less accepted that her own cherished possessions were destined to stay in store for quite some time to come.

‘What’s that?’ Abby demanded. She was scowling at the bags from Leanne’s shopping spree. Despite the irritable challenge in her eyes and pursed crossness of her lips, the ripe blossoming of her prettiness was hard to miss. She looked far more like Jack than she did Leanne, and by the time the braces came off and spots retreated she would quite possibly be more like him than ever.

‘It’s a few things for you,’ Leanne told her. ‘If you don’t like them or they don’t fit we can always take them back.’

Abby stared sourly at the bags, apparently torn between indulging her curiosity or offending her mother and ignoring them. In the end she said, ‘I don’t want anything thanks,’ and went back to her phone.

Stifling a sigh, Leanne ran the hot tap in order to give the acacia board a good clean before its restorative massage. ‘Can you fetch the linseed oil from the pantry?’ she asked Abby.

Abby either chose not to hear, or didn’t.

‘Abby!’

Tearing out her earbuds Abby shouted, ‘What?’

‘Did you have a good day at school?’

‘That’s not what you said.’

‘But it’s what I’m asking now. How was school?’

‘What do you care?’

Unable to understand why Abby would even ask the question, Leanne said, ‘I’m asking because I care.’

‘No. You’re asking because you think you have to. Well you don’t.’

Stifling a sigh, Leanne said, ‘Abby, we can’t go on like this …’

‘It’s not me. It’s you!’

‘OK, then tell me what I’m doing wrong.’

‘If you don’t know then why should I tell you?’

‘So I can put it right?’

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Heard it all before,’ and she stuffed her earbuds back in.

Deciding to give up for the moment, Leanne let a few minutes pass and then said, ‘When did you last speak to Kate?’

‘What?’ Abby shouted irritably. Then, yanking out an earbud, ‘I don’t know. Why?’

‘Was it this week, last week …’

‘I said I don’t know, all right?’

Guessing it would have to be, Leanne carried on soaping the board.

‘I don’t know why I bother talking to you,’ Abby muttered.

That could almost have been funny.

‘Do you want the truth?’ Abby growled. ‘I’m totally sick of this place. I can’t stand it here. I want to go back to London and if you don’t want to come with me …’

‘You know we don’t have a choice,’ Leanne cut in sharply. Love her daughter as she did, there were times when Abby’s attitude could drive a saint to distraction. ‘Where’s Tanya?’ she asked. ‘I thought she was coming home with you today?’

Abby shrugged, walked over to the rarely used front door and plonked herself down on the stairs that led up to Leanne’s master suite and a small guest room.

Since she apparently wasn’t ready to walk out on her mother yet, Leanne continued what she was doing, waiting for whatever else Abby might have to say.

This resentment, the seemingly constant antagonism between them, could be exhausting, but Leanne never let herself forget that Abby had been through an extremely difficult time, losing her father the way she had, and having to move away from her school and friends. She used to be popular, lively and involved in just about everything. Since Jack’s death and coming here it was as though a light had gone out inside her. She no longer seemed particularly interested in making friends – Tanya was a sweet enough girl, but very serious and studious, not Abby’s type at all. There were no after-school clubs any more, or girlie trips into town, and there was absolutely zero interest in doing anything with her mother.

In some ways it was as if Abby had stopped moving forward, was even, given how childish she could be at times, starting to regress.

‘We’re having dinner at Grandma’s this evening,’ Leanne told her.

‘What?’ Abby snapped, snatching the buds from her ears again. ‘What did you say this time?’

‘Don’t speak to me that way,’ Leanne snapped back. ‘If you’re in a bad mood about something, which you appear to be, let’s discuss it. Just don’t come home taking it out on me.’

‘Tell you what, I won’t bother to come home at all,’ Abby raged. ‘Would that suit you? I bet it would.’

‘Abby …’

‘It’s all right, I can take a hint. I know where I’m not wanted,’ and hiking her heavy schoolbag back on to her shoulder she stormed along the hall that led to her room.

When it was time to go next door to find out if Wilkie needed any help, after calling out several times, Leanne found herself banging on Abby’s door in an attempt to turf her out.

Apparently it wasn’t going to happen without another fight.

Sucking in her breath, as though taking Glory’s calm from the air, Leanne turned the handle, pushed hard and to her surprise the door opened so easily that she almost stumbled in.

Expecting an onslaught of ‘get out of my space and leave me alone’ she took a moment to register that no one was there. Experiencing an uneasy jolt she called, ‘Abby?’ and glanced along the hall to the bathroom.

No reply.

She looked into Abby’s room again and this time spotted the note on the bed.

Chapter Two

Rosy-cheeked from a quick dash outside to take in a delivery, Wilkie set the parcel down for opening later and took out a bottle of supermarket Chablis from the cream-coloured American-style fridge. Plonking it on the antiquated table at the centre of the farmhouse kitchen with its violet-blue vinyl covering and bamboo mats, she said, ‘So she’s at Tanya’s?’

Leanne unscrewed the bottle top as her mother fetched glasses. ‘Not according to her,’ she replied, still feeling irritable with her daughter, in spite of the relief of finding her so easily. ‘I haven’t heard from her, but Tanya’s mother assures me she’s there.’ Since Tanya’s parents lived in one of the larger houses on the private estate bordering Ash Morley it would only have taken Abby minutes to get there – and back again, when she decided to come.

Wilkie’s eyebrows rose. ‘To see a world in a grain of sand, And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour,’ she murmured, reaching for a cheese and onion crisp and crunching it loudly.

‘What?’ Leanne asked. ‘No, don’t bother. It’s Blake, isn’t it? But exactly what does it have to do with anything?’

‘It just came to me,’ Wilkie replied, her eyes drifting to the window as the wind chimes outside rattled like a tambourine in the force of a gale. ‘It was one of Glory’s favourites.’

Giving a moment to her aunt’s love of poetry, and her mother’s loss, Leanne sipped her wine and longed for easier times. ‘We were talking about Abby,’ she finally reminded her mother.

Wilkie quickly rallied. ‘Indeed we were, and she hasn’t run away, which is marvellous. Of course she wouldn’t, we know that …’

‘No we don’t, Mum. She’s fourteen. Girls of her age do some very stupid things, and considering her history …’

‘But where would she go, apart from to Tanya’s?’

‘I’ve no idea, that’s what frightens me.’

‘Which is precisely why she does it – to frighten you.’

‘Of course, but it’s cruel. She knows how I feel about the way Kate left. OK, Kate didn’t run away, but it kind of felt like it, and Abby plays on it to torment me. When did you last speak to Kate, by the way?’

Wilkie drank her wine as she thought. ‘I think it was the day before yesterday. She rang to ask if you were here, but you were … Where were you? Oh yes, you were helping Klaudia to move Jolly Albert’s bedroom from upstairs to down. It’s very sad that he doesn’t have a family to help him. Did he manage a smile at all?’

‘What do you think?’ Leanne countered. Jolly Albert never smiled, or said thank you, or even spoke if he could help it. He was one of the most curmudgeonly old people Leanne had ever met, but his grumbling, grunting insistence that he wanted to be left alone had never succeeded in keeping Klaudia the self-appointed care angel away. It was one of her missions in life to look out for those no one else bothered with, and she had no competition where Jolly Albert was concerned.

Wilkie looked up at a knock on the door, and before she could call ‘come in’ two small children in thick winter coats skipped into the room.

‘Ah, my little sweethearts,’ Wilkie crooned, holding out her arms. ‘We were just talking about your mummy. And here’s Antoni,’ she added, as a large, muscular man with more hair around his stubbly chin than on his shiny head came in after them. He’d been living at the stables with Klaudia for the past several months, and had gone out of his way to be helpful around Ash Morley. However, Leanne still couldn’t say that she and her mother really knew him for he didn’t speak much, at least not to them.

Closing the door quickly to keep out the cold, he said, ‘I hope you don’t mind me bringing them early.’

‘No, of course not,’ Wilkie assured him, hugging ten-year-old Mia and six-year-old Adam to her grandmotherly chest.

‘Is Abby here?’ Mia asked softly as she came to embrace Leanne. Her silvery-blonde hair curled in feathery wisps around her elfin face; the expression in her large brown eyes was both shy and eager.

Leanne caressed the little girl’s cheek. ‘I’m afraid she might not be coming this evening,’ she replied. ‘She has a lot of homework so she’s gone to a friend’s to do it.’

Mia nodded, but there was no mistaking her disappointment. Abby was her idol.

‘Will you have a drink, Antoni?’ Wilkie offered, getting up to fetch another glass, or a beer.

‘No, no, I must be going,’ he replied, moving restlessly. ‘Klaudia will be home soon and I want to speak to her before I – I leave for work.’

After ruffling Adam’s head with a chapped hand, then placing it gently on Mia’s, he gazed down at them for a moment as they looked up at him, clearly not sure what to expect.

With an awkward glance about the room, he gave them a wave and left.

Leanne’s eyes met her mother’s, but neither of them was going to comment on Antoni’s oddness with the children right there.

Wilkie soon had hot chocolate and cookies under way, and within a few minutes Mia and Adam were being bustled through to the sitting room where the gas fire was already lit and the TV was tuned to their favourite channel. ‘Our tea is still a little way off,’ she told them chattily as she settled them down, ‘so you won’t spoil your appetites. But you mustn’t grass me up, OK? This is our little secret.’

‘It’s secret,’ Adam echoed, with a breathy gulp that almost swallowed the words.

Smiling at how good her mother was with the children, who were as at home here as Abby was, Leanne started to set the table, adding an extra place for Abby just in case she graced them with an appearance.

‘They’re happy in there,’ Wilkie announced, leaving the door ajar so she could hear what was happening. ‘It’s lovely and warm, and they don’t want to sit around listening to us. Goodness, have we finished that bottle already?’

‘It was only half full,’ Leanne reminded her.

Going to fetch another, Wilkie said, ‘So, was it just me, or did Antoni seem … out of sorts to you?’

‘He wasn’t himself,’ Leanne agreed.

Wilkie sighed. ‘I just hope everything’s all right. We wouldn’t want to see a return of any of that nasty business. The way people have turned since the referendum … He dealt with it very well the last time, but that’s not to say he will again.’

Knowing what her mother was referring to, and agreeing that they really wouldn’t want to see Antoni get into a fight with some neo-Nazi types again, Leanne refilled their glasses and returned to the subject of her elder daughter. ‘So, you’ve spoken to Kate,’ she said, her eyebrows arching as the wind ghost-whistled down the chimney. ‘How was she?’

‘She sounded very cheery, as she always does, not that I understood half of what she was saying about all her studies and things, but it’s lovely to hear her.’

It always is, Leanne was thinking, feeling sad at how little time Kate had spent with them over Christmas. Just four days, before she’d flown back to the States to go skiing with her boyfriend. She’d returned to IU now – Indiana University – where she was in her third year of a four-year degree course and apparently loving every minute of it. ‘We keep missing one another and leaving messages,’ she said. ‘It was much easier when she was at Martin’s, I could always get hold of her then.’

‘Yes, well, I remember it was the same when you went off to uni, I never knew where you were from one day to the next. I just had to wait for you to call, and of course you always did in the end. Now, we really must watch the news to find out what’s going on in the world, frightening though it is these days.’

As Wilkie turned on the TV the door suddenly swung open, and Abby gusted in with a small riot of leaves in her wake.

‘I see you were worried,’ she snapped at her mother, glaring meaningfully at the wine.

‘I knew where you were,’ Leanne told her, choosing to ignore the unspoken accusation that she was going the same way as Jack.

‘You’re a minx,’ Wilkie scolded as Abby went to embrace her. ‘I don’t understand why you have to torment your poor mother so much. She does her best, you know.’

‘You should try being me,’ Abby retorted.

Shooting her a look, Leanne said, ‘Mia and Adam are in the sitting room. I’ll bring you through a hot chocolate if you want one.’

Abby shrugged. ‘Where’s Klaudia? I thought she was coming too.’

‘She’ll be here soon,’ Wilkie replied, glancing at her retro wall clock with its crooked pendulum and rotating cherubs.

Getting up to make more chocolate Leanne found herself thinking about Antoni again, and Klaudia and those sweet little children in the next room …

‘Leanne,’ Wilkie said darkly.

Leanne looked up, concerned by the tone. Then, following her mother’s eyes to the TV, she stopped what she was doing and watched.

Klaudia Marek was the kind of person who could almost always find something to be happy about. She wore a smile like a jewel: sometimes it was carefree and joyful, other times discreet and respectful, or just as often it would be quiet and unassuming. Only when she was alone did she let the façade slip for a moment, but only a moment. It didn’t do any good to brood on the difficulties life often threw at her; it wouldn’t make them any easier to cope with, nor would it make them go away.

Best to remember that she’d get through them, and that no matter what, there was always someone worse off than herself, or someone who felt just as vulnerable and anxious as she did about what the future might hold.

She loved this country, and had ever since she’d arrived just before Mia was born. Things hadn’t always gone well. She and her then husband Igor had never had much money, he’d found it difficult to hold down a job and after Adam was born he’d suddenly decided that marriage and fatherhood wasn’t for him. That had been a very dark time, but people had been so kind, especially Glory and Wilkie Emmett who’d taken Klaudia and her children into their hearts and given her the stables of Ash Morley as her home. They had been there for her again when her mother had fallen ill and eventually died, taking her to the airport, caring for her children while she was gone; Glory had even flown to Poland with her to support her through the time of the funeral.

Just like the Emmett sisters, now sadly only Wilkie, Klaudia was well known around Kesterly for the voluntary work she did – in her case mostly with the elderly, caring for a few above and beyond what they deserved, according to some. In her mind everyone was deserving, and her mother had been the same.

On top of all her charity and community work Klaudia also helped Leanne to run Glory Days, and to give her income a hefty boost she put her excellent bookkeeping skills to use for small companies and well-heeled individuals.

She was on her way back from one of her regular clients now, driving a little too fast in her muddy Fiat Uno, wanting to get home before Antoni, her partner of less than a year, left to start his night shift as a security guard. Not that he’d leave the children on their own, he’d never do that, but she didn’t want to make him late for work, nor did she want to take Wilkie and Leanne’s kindness for granted.

Braking hard to stop herself running a red light, she glanced apologetically in the mirror and waved to the driver behind, who was honking angrily at being made to stop. She wasn’t about to let him rattle her, his issues were his own. Uppermost in her mind was the horrible thing that had happened today. She hadn’t shown how hurt and humiliated she’d felt, nor would she. She wasn’t even sure about confiding in Antoni. It would only make him angry and vengeful, and what purpose would that serve? He’d already got into trouble simply for being Polish and managed to come off the worst. She didn’t want anything like it happening again.

It wasn’t until she was pulling up next to his car outside the stables that she remembered Wilkie had invited her and the children for supper this evening. She melted at the mere thought of it. Sitting around Wilkie’s table, or Glory’s (now Leanne’s), drinking wine and tucking into their scrumptious winter stews and casseroles was nothing short of heaven, especially at the end of a difficult day. Being with her surrogate family helped her to forget whatever pettiness or stupidity she’d run up against, and that was all that had happened really; something very stupid and petty had been said that simply needed to be forgotten.

Making the short dash through an icy wind to the stables’ stone porch, she kicked off her boots and pushed open the front door. She was surprised not to be greeted by one, if not both of her children. They were usually waiting on the bottom stairs when she was a little behind the promised time, almost as though fearing she wouldn’t come back. Sweet little Mia, she was so sparkly and happy with lots of friends and a healthy confidence, and yet she could be shy and unsure of herself in ways that sometimes concerned Klaudia, in spite of knowing that most kids were the same. As for Adam, Klaudia felt so powerfully protective of her son that sometimes it was hard to let him leave the house, never mind go to school. His learning difficulties were so upsetting, and yet he seemed not to know he was different. If other children laughed at him he laughed too, and if they teased or bullied him he seemed not to understand and tried to find out what he’d done wrong. In spite of many and various tests no one had yet been able to give a reason for his problems, although she’d been assured he would probably grow out of them soon enough. Thank goodness for the teaching assistant, Victoria Gibbs, who’d been assigned to take care of him in class. She was wonderful and vigilant and helped him so much with his confidence that Klaudia was hopeful he might soon make a friend or two.

Scooping the mail from the floor she shouted, ‘Halloooo! Is anyone at home?’ and carrying on down the darkened hallway she pushed open the kitchen door to find Antoni speaking to someone on the phone.

‘Where are the children?’ she asked, glancing through the envelopes and handing over those that were his.

‘Aren’t you going to Wilkie’s this evening?’ he asked, ending his call. ‘I took them there about ten minutes ago.’

Her head came up, her soft brown eyes lighting with the suggestion of what this might mean. He’d taken the children so they could have a little time to themselves?

When he turned away a frown creased her brow. He seemed … Upset? Angry? ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked, worriedly.

He dashed a large hand over his closely shaved head, took a breath and turned to look at her. His ruggedly handsome face was taut, pale; it seemed closed in a way that was increasing her unease.

‘What’s happened?’ she pressed.

He stared down at her so hard that she almost took a step back. His powerful six-foot frame had always seemed too big for this small kitchen, too big even for her own tiny self, but it had never unnerved her before.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, breaking into their native tongue, ‘but I – I’m leaving.’

Klaudia blinked. Leaving as in …? Going to work? ‘But it’s not time,’ she protested, ‘and there’s obviously something on your mind, so …’

‘I mean I’m leaving you.’

Klaudia continued to stare at him, knowing she was hearing correctly, but not wanting it to go any further.

She swallowed drily and tried to think what to say. He’d threatened it before, several times, but this time it was feeling different. There was a steeliness, a determination about him that she wasn’t going to penetrate. A smile with some cajoling wouldn’t do it, she knew that instinctively. Nevertheless she tried. ‘Whatever’s happened,’ she said, ‘we can work it out. We always have before …’