Just Between Us (39 page)

Tara wanted to scream that her parents weren’t the problem, that it was Finn and his bloody selfishness that upset her, but the words didn’t come. Instead, she thought of her father’s betrayal of the family and how she, Tara, had loved him almost more than her mother and now she’d been proved wrong. He wasn’t the man she’d thought he was. He’d hurt them all for nothing. She’d chosen the wrong daddy and now she’d chosen the wrong husband.

Tara wasn’t the sort of person who cried. But in the five days since the disastrous ruby wedding, she’d felt the threat of tears welling up inside her. She’d fought them off furiously, refusing to give in, but now they flooded out. Finn watched in amazement as Tara silently started to cry. She didn’t sob or howl. She barely moved, but still the tears rushed down her cheeks.

‘Tara, love, don’t cry, please.’ He wrapped himself around
her, holding her tightly in his arms. ‘We can get through this, we love each other. That’s all we need, isn’t it?’

It was nice being held and having her tears gently wiped away as if she was a child again. Like a child, Tara didn’t try to stop crying. She simply let the misery wash over her, draining away the pain, she hoped. She didn’t want to hurt like this but she couldn’t help it: the hurt was just there, deep inside her.

‘I love you, Tara, you know that, please say you know that.’ Finn stroked her tenderly. ‘I know I’m hard to live with but I’ll try, honestly I’ll try. Will you give me another chance?

With his arms encircling her and feeling his heart beating close to hers, Tara said yes. ‘I love you,’ she said through the muffled veil of tears. ‘I want to be with you, I don’t want to be alone.’ She couldn’t bear to be alone now. All the things she’d planned to say to Finn had vanished from her mind. She wanted the comfort of him holding her because if he wasn’t there, she might have to think about it all.

‘You won’t be,’ Finn said reassuringly. ‘I’m here, love, I’m here.’

Tara wiped her face with her sleeve and buried her face in her husband’s shoulder again. Everything would work out, wouldn’t it?

Holly sipped her takeaway latte gratefully as she joined the last few stragglers in the queue for the Kinvarra train. She’d been sure she’d be too late for the half six train because she’d missed two buses to Kingsbridge Station and had ended up leaping in a taxi and promising the driver a big tip if he got her there on time.

Miraculously, the taxi had slipped through the worst of the traffic and got her there with ten minutes to spare, long enough to buy a ticket, a magazine and a latte. Even more incredibly, she got what had to be the last seat on the train. She hoisted her hold-all onto the luggage rack, managing not to hit anyone while doing it, and then flopped onto the seat and relaxed.

She hadn’t even got round to the magazine crossword when the train pulled into the tiny station at Kinvarra forty minutes later. Holly got off to see her father waiting patiently behind the barrier, waving the way he’d waved so many times over the years when he’d picked her up from the station. With a shock, she realised that he’d aged years in the past week. His face was lined and drawn, and his usual beaming smile was absent. He stooped, as if the mental anguish was physically weighing him down.

‘Hi, Dad,’ said Holly, desperately trying to hide how shocked she was by his appearance.

His answer was to enfold her in his arms so tightly it hurt.

‘Hello, Holly,’ he mumbled. ‘It’s so nice to see you, so nice.’

Holly thought he was going to cry there and then.

‘Come on, Dad,’ she said, taking his hand in hers and heading briskly for the station door. ‘I’m starving, why don’t we go out to eat?’

‘Do we have to go out?’ asked Hugh plaintively. ‘I thought we could stay at home. Angela sent Alastair over with a stew. They’re trying to feed me up.’

He could certainly do with feeding up, Holly thought worriedly. Her father’s tall frame had always allowed him to carry a few extra pounds round his middle without making him look even vaguely overweight. But there wasn’t an extra ounce of flesh on his frame now.

‘A huge steak and lots of fat, greasy chips, that’s what you need,’ Holly said. ‘I hate stew, even Angela’s!’

They went to Maria’s Diner, ordered steak for Hugh, Maria’s special seafood pizza for Holly and two glasses of red wine. When the wine came, Hugh didn’t touch it. He gazed into space beyond Holly as if he didn’t even see her.

She chatted idly about her week in work, how it looked as if she might be moving out of children’s wear, possibly to interiors, and how she’d really love to be in international fashion, but that was a bit unlikely because she didn’t have any experience in that department. Normally, Hugh would indignantly point out that international fashion would be lucky to get someone of her calibre, that she was clearly the brightest person in the entire department store and she ought to realise how skilled she was. Tonight, he just nodded blankly and made ‘um’ noises as if he was listening, but he was miles away. Holly ploughed on.

She told him about the plans for Joan’s show, which was in ten days and promised to be a wildly glamorous social occasion, complete with real models and television cameras. She told him that Stella and Tara were worried about him, but didn’t mention that she’d spoken to her mother the previous night.

Rose hadn’t said a single word about Hugh.

‘I don’t want to talk about your father,’ she’d said firmly
when Holly had phoned. ‘Tell me all your news.’ So Tara had, and in return, heard all about Freddie’s wonderful house, the dogs, and how Rose was cooking for meals on wheels. It was as if Rose was away on some marvellous holiday with a return date all planned, so there was no need to talk about it. Holly was an expert at not mentioning tricky subjects, so she listened to her mother’s holiday diary and said nothing.

The food arrived and Holly dug into her pizza. Her father didn’t even pick up his fork.

‘Dad, you’ve got to eat,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s not doing you any good to starve yourself. You’ll get ill.’

He raised tortured eyes to hers. ‘I don’t care,’ he said listlessly.

‘You won’t get Mum back like this.’

‘Your mother isn’t coming back to me. I know that for sure. She never does anything by half measures. She’s left and she’s gone for good.’

‘How can you be so defeatist?’ Holly asked. ‘Perhaps Mum is waiting for you to talk to her. You know she’s staying with Aunt Freddie?’

‘Stella told me. But it doesn’t make any difference. She could be staying down the road or she could be in the North Pole for all it matters because she won’t see me. She left me a letter, you know.’ His face was grey with misery. ‘She said she didn’t want me to think I could follow her and sort it all out, because there was nothing to sort out. Our marriage was over and she naturally wanted a divorce. She said she should have done it years ago, that she hated me for humiliating her and she hated herself even worse for letting me do it.
I hope you’re suffering as much as I suffered
. Those were her exact words. I’ve read it over and over.’

Suddenly, Holly didn’t feel hungry any more.

She could understand why her father kept staring into space dismally. They left after eating little of their food.

‘Was the meal all right?’ asked the waitress anxiously.

‘Lovely, it was lovely,’ said Holly. ‘We weren’t as hungry as we’d thought.’

They drove home with the radio loud to cover up the gaping silence. Holly thought about her mother. The woman who’d written such a hard, angry letter didn’t sound like Rose.

It was sad to see this new side to her mother, this hard edge of anger in that normally calm and lovely facade. Holly had grown up with everyone wistfully saying that Rose was a truly marvellous person, so much so that Holly had felt disloyal for ever thinking that she wished her mother loved her as much as she seemed to love everyone else. When she’d heard about how her parents had longed for their third child to be a boy, Holly had decided that this was the root of the problem. It wasn’t that Rose didn’t love Holly, she told herself, just that her mother had hoped for a son.

As Hugh negotiated the familiar bends and twists on the way to Meadow Lodge, Holly was filled with the desire to ask him about this forbidden subject that burned in her heart. She glanced at him, noticing the way his knuckles were white from clenching the steering wheel. He didn’t need her angst right now. He had enough to deal with.

‘All right, Dad?’ she squeezed his shoulder affectionately.

He nodded, not saying anything. Holly thought she saw the glint of tears in his eyes but she couldn’t be sure.

The next day was glorious, with not a cloud in the sky and the scent of summer in the air even though it was only early May. Holly jollied her father along enough to get him out for a walk with Alastair and Angela.

‘We can’t stay stuck in the house all weekend and a walk will do us both good,’ she said, hurrying round before they left to collect the bits and bobs they needed like her lip screen and a baseball hat to protect Hugh’s head from the sun.

He took the baseball hat meekly and put it on. ‘A walk will do us good,’ he repeated blankly.

Alastair seemed pathetically pleased that Holly was talking to him.

‘Stella’s been so very cool with me on the phone,’ he said
mournfully as the four of them made their way along a lakeside path in Kinvarra’s huge nature reserve observed by several odd black and white ducks who were clearly hoping that somebody in the party had brought along a few crumbs of bread. ‘She seems to blame me more than your father.’

Holly patted Alastair’s hand. ‘She’ll get over it, Alastair. She wants to blame someone and Dad is too shattered to blame him.’

‘You’re getting very wise in your old age, Holly,’ said Angela fondly.

‘Am I?’ Holly looked pleased. ‘Stella was always the wise one.’

‘And you were the one who underestimated herself,’ Angela replied. The two women slowed down, letting the men walk on ahead. ‘Your father has always thought the world of you: I’m glad you’re sticking by him. I know it’s not easy but he needs you.’

There was one question Holly had to ask.

‘Did you know?’

Angela shook her head vehemently. ‘No, I didn’t have a clue. I’d have told Rose if I did. Believe me, I nearly killed Alastair for keeping it a secret from me. All the modern marriage guidance experts tell you we need our little secrets and our own private space, but I’m of the old school. I like to think I’m the map-maker of every crevice of Alastair’s mind,’ she added firmly. ‘Well, it’s too late now but if I had known, I’d have done something, told Hugh to sort himself out and not risk everything.’ She sighed.

Holly believed her. Angela hadn’t known but
she
had. She plucked up the courage to tell Angela, in preparation for when she’d have to tell Rose.

‘The thing is, Angela, well, I knew Dad had been seeing someone else. Do you think Mum will be angry with me?’

‘You did?’ said Angela, startled. ‘When did you find out?’

‘When I was sixteen or seventeen. I didn’t know for sure, but I guessed.’

Angela looked so astonished that Holly was sorry she’d
said anything. ‘He was just talking to someone on the phone and it sounded so…so intimate. But it didn’t upset me or anything.’ Oh no, that sounded weird, as if she didn’t care about the thought of her father cheating on her mother. Holly tried to remedy matters.

‘It’s just that I loved Dad so much and I was never as close to Mum as Stella and Tara were. That’s not Mum’s fault or anything,’ she added loyally.

Holly, anxiously trying to make sure that Angela understood that none of this was Rose’s fault, didn’t notice Angela stare sadly at the most-loved of her three adopted nieces.

She and Alastair had never been blessed with children of their own. Oh there were godchildren and nieces and nephews, but none wholly theirs. Perhaps because of that, the Miller girls had been like surrogate children to them, Tara and Holly in particular. Stella had been a grave, selfreliant little girl of eight or nine when the Devons and the Millers had first met, a mini version of Rose with the same calm dark eyes and an air of self-possession. She’d adored her mother too much to spend time in the Devons’ house with Hugh when he dropped over to see Alastair. But Tara, an engaging tomboy, had loved joining Hugh and Alastair on their days fishing and had grown up feeling utterly at home with Aunty Angela and Uncle Alastair. Angela loved Tara’s madcap sense of fun and sparky humour, and would have done anything for dear, kind Stella, but her heart belonged to the shy, insecure Holly.

As she’d watched Holly grow up, Angela had often felt troubled by the hairline crack she detected in Holly and Rose’s relationship, a flaw so fine that almost nobody else appeared to notice it.

‘Your Mum loves you, Holly, she won’t be angry with you. You didn’t want to hurt her by telling her the truth.’

‘Do you really think so?’ Holly looked so pathetically anxious that Angela felt an unaccustomed stab of irritation towards her friend, Rose. Fine, so Rose had stormed off in high dudgeon over Hugh’s affairs. His carry-on had been
shocking any way you looked at it and Angela had told him so in no uncertain terms. But Rose wasn’t the only injured party in the Miller family. Somehow, in the mess that had grown out of Hugh and Rose’s very separate lives, and allied to what had clearly been Rose’s post-natal depression when she’d had Holly, little Holly was the one who’d suffered. It was high time Rose realised that, Angela decided.

‘They’ll work it out, you know,’ she said, linking arms with Holly. ‘Your mum will come back, I’m sure of it.’

‘Just because that’s what we all want, doesn’t mean it will happen,’ Holly pointed out. ‘They have to sort it out for themselves.’ She watched her father walking in the distance with Alastair. Rose would survive, Holly knew. Her mother was a strong person. But without Rose, would Hugh manage?

Vicki rummaged around in her handbag and pulled out a bulging, clear plastic make-up bag. From the middle of a jumble of tubes, pencils and compacts, she extracted a giant brush and a black compact.

‘Bronzer,’ she said. ‘You need it, Stella.’

‘Thanks.’ Stella looked at her wan face in the compact mirror. There were mauve circles haunting the thin skin under her eyes. She felt as if she was ageing at double speed. ‘You don’t have the equipment for a blood transfusion in there, do you?’

Vicki smiled but didn’t laugh. ‘You look terrible, babe. Like you haven’t slept in weeks.’

Stella didn’t need anyone to tell her that. She could see it for herself. She did her best with the bronzing brush, sweeping it round her face in big generous strokes the way they did on fashion programmes. ‘It’s nothing to do with sleeping. I’m out like a light when I get into bed, I sleep the sleep of the dead. The problems start when I wake up.’

‘Your mum and dad?’

Stella snapped the compact shut. What was the point of bronzer. ‘More my dad than Mum. She’s doing fine and says she’s too busy to come to Dublin to spend some time with myself and Amelia, although I think that’s so she can avoid talking about their split and what happens next. Dad’s falling to pieces and my mother won’t talk to him.’

‘Difficult being piggy in the middle,’ said Vicki.

‘That’s only the half of it,’ Stella added grimly. ‘Problem
two is Jenna. She is the rudest child I have ever met in my life. Nick and I took herself and Amelia to the cinema the other night and she was utterly obnoxious to me.’

‘Is the problem Nick’s ex-wife?’ asked Vicki. ‘Is she poisoning Jenna against you.’

Stella sighed. ‘That’s the thing, Nick says she isn’t. He says that Wendy is fine about us and is totally reasonable about Jenna and Sara spending time here. But she doesn’t seem to want to let Nick go, does that make sense? She phones Nick night and day about Jenna’s latest exploits. It’s like Wendy has this finely-tuned telepathic sense and she rings exactly when we’re going somewhere or doing something. As soon as I put dinner on the table, bam, she’s on the phone. It’s not that he shouldn’t be involved with her, it’s just that…’ Stella paused, ‘she’s always there and I think Nick’s kidding himself about how she’s dealt with everything.’

Stella couldn’t explain the infuriation of watching their meal cool and congeal on the table while Nick talked to his ex-wife, made ‘sorry’ gestures to Stella and agreed to talk to Jenna. No matter how much he praised the food afterwards, Stella was grimly convinced it was now inedible. Nick would eat more heartily than usual to make up for it, while Stella sat there with her shoulders tense and her jaw set rigidly. She’d come to hate Nick’s phone ringing. The very noise made her stomach lurch.

‘Does she always phone about Jenna?’ demanded Vicki.

‘Pretty much, yes. I don’t phone Amelia’s father over every problem. I know it’s different because Glenn’s not really part of our lives but it drives me mad that Wendy is supposed to be this intelligent woman and yet all of a sudden, she can’t deal with anything without phoning Nick up. He says she’s fine about the divorce and wants them both to get on with their lives, but,’ she paused, ‘it doesn’t seem that way to me. She wants him in her life, she’s not going to let him go.’

‘When did she start this?’ asked Vicki shrewdly.

‘When Nick told the girls we’d discussed living together.’

‘Maybe she thought there was some hope for them getting back together until that happened,’ said Vicki. ‘This is her knee-jerk reaction. She can’t help it.’

‘Why?’ asked Stella in exasperation. ‘They’re divorced, they both agreed to get divorced, it’s over. Why can’t she get on with her own life? When Glenn and I split up,
I
had to get on with my life. I didn’t phone him every day asking him how to programme the video.’

‘You’re not the sort of person to go to pieces, Stella,’ Vicki pointed out. ‘You’re one of life’s copers. That’s what you do. And besides, you and Glenn weren’t married that long. Nick and Wendy were married twenty years and it’s obviously hard for her to come to terms with the fact that it is over. When she got married, there was no divorce in this country, and people expected marriage to be for life. That could take some getting used to. It’s a whole life change.’

‘Fine,’ said Stella in a brittle tone. ‘But I don’t see why I’m getting all the grief. They were apart before Nick met me. If Wendy got on with her life, then perhaps Jenna wouldn’t be so vile to me. I’m convinced that Jenna believes that if I wasn’t around, her parents would be back together again and that’s not fair. I didn’t split up their marriage: they did that themselves.’

‘Calm down,’ said Vicki. Stella was worrying her. She never normally lost her cool like this. ‘It’ll work out in the end.’

‘I’m glad you think so. But the odds are definitely against us, particularly if we decided to get married. They did this research and it seems that when men divorce, sixty per cent of them remarry. Out of that group, sixty per cent of the second marriages fail.’

Vicki worked the figures out in her head. ‘So out of a hundred men, you end up with twenty-four who are happily married for the second time.’

That’s not all.’ Stella’s face was grim. ‘The first five to
seven years of a remarriage are as bad as the year following a divorce. In other words, hell on earth.’

‘Time is a great healer,’ ventured Vicki. ‘Anyway, you never told me you’d talked about getting married.’

‘We have,’ Stella revealed, ‘but I don’t know if that’s much of an idea seeing as how Jenna hates the sight of me. Another seven years of this and I’ll be on every anti-depressant known to woman. Nick’s not much better. He tries to hide it, but he’s deeply stressed about how Jenna reacts to me, and it is affecting our relationship. But he still thinks we can work it all out. We’re going away for a weekend together, the five of us.’

Vicki winced. ‘Jesus,’ she said.

‘My sentiments exactly.’ She sighed. ‘We must have been out of our minds to even mention moving in together to Nick’s kids. Until then, there was a sensation of living at the foot of a volcano. Now, it’s as if somebody’s put a nuclear bomb in the crater.’

Amelia was excited about the weekend. She’d spent hours packing and unpacking her belongings, and the purple denim backpack Stella had told her to bring with her books and toys was disembowelled at least twice a day. Now, it was ready, full to the brim, and with odd bulges from Barbie’s pointed feet and the lump that was Casper, the grey furry toy rabbit Stella had brought her from Paris.

Stella hadn’t deliberated so long about her own wardrobe. She’d packed to match her mood: dark.

They were going to Moon’s Hotel, a big holiday complex on the coast. Moon’s was a watchword for family holidays and Stella could remember many friends of hers heading off there with a carload of kids for weekends of tennis, swimming and with the possibility of a romantic dinner for two courtesy of the hotel’s nanny service. Stella had always felt mildly jealous of those people. Families. Moon’s was a place for families, where dads brought the kids swimming and let mum have a facial in the hotel spa.

Ironically, now that she was going there with a readymade family, she wished she wasn’t. If only it had been just her, Nick and Amelia, she’d have been so happy. In the two weeks since her parents’ devastating split, Stella had been stressed out of her head and a few days holiday seemed just what she needed. But not this sort of holiday.

When Nick arrived outside the house with Sara and Jenna already installed in the car, Stella tried to ignore the sinking feeling in her stomach at the thought of a weekend with everyone on their best behaviour, except Jenna, who would be on her usual child-of-Satan behaviour.

But Jenna had clearly been bribed with something or other. First, she got out of the front of the car and climbed in the back so that Stella could sit in the front. Secondly, she was civil.

‘Hello, Stella, hello, Amelia,’ she said when Stella opened the back door for Amelia.

‘Hello, Jenna,’ said Stella cautiously. ‘Why don’t you sit in the middle, Amelia, as you’re the smallest.’

Amelia climbed carefully over Jenna and plonked down beside Sara, who was curled up on the other side, eyes halfclosed. She wore her customary jeans and a hoodie, and her dark hair was unruly.

‘Hi, Sara. How are you?’ asked Stella.

‘Wrecked,’ came the reply. ‘We had exams today. I was up all night studying.’

Stella stifled a grin. She’d burned the midnight oil herself when she was at college.

‘Five in the morning was the toughest time to stay awake,’ she remarked, getting into the front seat. ‘Tiredness hits you and you want to crawl into bed, but there’s no point because you’d never wake up and when you did, you’d be like a zombie.’

‘You pulled all-nighters, too?’ said Sara, surprised.

‘Doesn’t everyone?’ Stella laughed. ‘But if you do a couple of them, you soon learn to get your study done long before the exams. It’s easier than facing a whole night awake propped up with coffee.’

‘You said it!’ Sara made a cushion from a jumper, wedged it into a corner and closed her eyes. ‘Wake me when we’re there.’

Outside, Nick slammed the boot.

‘All set?’ he said, sliding into the driver’s seat. He put a hand on Stella’s and gave her a warm smile.

‘All set,’ she replied, determined not to worry about Jenna’s reaction to his affectionate action. Stella had got so used to modifying her behaviour around Jenna that she was almost reluctant to hold Nick’s hand in public.

‘It’s going to be a great weekend,’ Nick said, driving off.

Stella crossed her fingers.

Spending a lazy Saturday morning being pampered in the hotel spa had made Stella feel languorous and almost her usual serene self.

‘Have everything done,’ advised Nick the night before when Stella had examined the brochure and debated the wisdom of having a facial, back massage or manicure. ‘Sara will be in bed until lunchtime and I’ll bring Amelia and Jenna out for the morning. Then, we can try out the pool. You enjoy yourself.’

‘Jenna won’t be interested in water slides and messing around in the pool,’ Stella pointed out.

‘You’d be surprised,’ said Nick.

Filled with a sense of wellbeing after her back massage, Stella got back to their room to find a message from Nick telling her that he and the girls had returned from their jaunt into the town, and had now gone to the pool. Still in the hotel dressing gown, Stella made her way down to the sports complex. There was one pool dedicated to adults who wanted to swim laps in peace, and a larger one with slides for kids or anyone who wanted to whizz down into the water at high speed. To one side were tables grouped around a poolside café where parents could sit and watch their offspring cavort. Stella kept her eyes peeled, halfexpecting to see Jenna perched in the café, watching the
youngsters enjoying themselves with a disdainful look on her face.

But there she was, standing in the pool and yelling at the top of her voice as Nick and Amelia climbed the slide to the top.

‘Face down,’ she was yelling. ‘Dad, you’ve got to come face down this time.’

‘No way,’ he yelled back.

Stella could see Amelia giggling at the thought.

‘Coward!’ yelled Jenna. ‘Amelia, make him come face down!’

With her blonde hair slicked down her back and her face wet and devoid of make-up, she looked like a child for the first time since Stella had met her. A happy child.

Stella sat down by the café and ordered a mineral water. She sat there for ages, watching the other three laughing and splashing about until finally, Amelia noticed her.

‘Mummy!’ She doggy paddled over. ‘I went down the slide, Mum!’

‘I saw you, you were very brave.’

‘Jenna went down on her front!’ Amelia said. ‘She says water goes up your nose.’

Jenna’s face closed off and the guarded, adult expression returned. For the first time in ages, Stella felt a sliver of sympathy for the girl. Nick was right: Jenna was still a child and she hadn’t been able to deal with her parents’ break-up. Stella thought of how she had reacted to Hugh and Rose’s abrupt split. The very idea still knocked her for six. If it was hard to deal with that at the age of thirty-eight, how much harder could it be for Jenna?

Nick hauled himself out of the pool.

‘C’mon, Jenna,’ he said, holding a hand down for his daughter. ‘Time for refreshment.’

Stella pulled up another chair for Jenna while Nick went to the counter to order drinks.

‘Are you having fun, Jenna?’ Stella asked, forgetting herself enough to put a hand on the girl’s shoulder. Jenna shrugged it off as if Stella’s hand was burning hot.

‘Sorry,’ Stella said automatically. Then she stopped. Why should she say sorry? She was trying to be kind. ‘Jenna, we have to get along. It would be easier on everyone if you made a bit of an effort.’

‘Why?’ demanded Jenna, hatred burning out of her eyes. And she turned and ran off.

Amelia turned to her mother with big, grave eyes. ‘Why doesn’t Jenna like you, Mummy?’

Stella had answers for most of Amelia’s questions, even ones about how next door’s terrier had got the four puppies in her tummy and why the puppies knew how to drink their mummy’s milk when they didn’t have their eyes opened yet. But she didn’t know how to answer this one.

Amelia answered for her. ‘Is it because you’re not her mummy?’

Stella bit her lip. ‘Noo,’ she said. ‘It’s hard to explain, darling. I’ll do my best when we get home, is that OK?’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Stella, when Nick returned. ‘My fault, I tried to be nice to her.’

Nick’s face slipped into what Stella silently called ‘the look’. It came over his features so regularly now, a tautening of the jaw along with a sorrowful and helpless look in his eyes.

She caught his hand and held it tightly, willing the look to disappear.

‘I better go and talk to her,’ he said.

‘Yes, of course,’ said Stella automatically.

She watched him go, noticing how his tall frame looked weighed down because of the way his shoulders were uncharacteristically slumped, then turned to Amelia with a big grin fastened on her face.