Running down the centre of the room was a long plank table littered with crayons, paints, paper, glitter and jigsaw pieces. At one end sat Jake, Annie’s husband, with his laptop. He jumped to his feet and strode over to Amelia the moment she entered.
‘Hi,’ he gushed, enveloping her in another hug. ‘How are you? So sorry to hear about the job. It must’ve been a huge shock.’
‘You could say that,’ mumbled Amelia, the urge to howl increasing by the second.
‘Still, on the plus side, it gives you a chance to spend some time with us,’ he continued. ‘The kids have been dying to see you. Are you going to say hello to Aunty Amelia, guys?’
Kneeling on the bench at the table, seven-year-old Sophie, the double of her mother, her mass of golden hair squashed into two fat pigtails and a Rapunzel-like hat on her head, gazed at Amelia with huge green eyes.
‘Hello,’ she said.
Amelia managed a watery smile back.
‘And what about you, Thomas,’ chivvied Jake. ‘You remember Aunty Amelia, don’t you?’
Kneeling alongside his sister, two-year-old Thomas, in a Spiderman outfit topped off with a policeman’s helmet, ran an appraising gaze over his aunt. ‘No,’ he replied flatly.
Jake snorted with laughter. ‘Sorry, Amelia. You’ve caught him on a bad day. We ran out of yogurt popsicles earlier which, I’m sure you can appreciate, is almost a national disaster.’
Despite having no idea what a yogurt popsicle was, and being devoid of the energy to ask, Amelia opted for another weak smile.
‘Anyway, never mind our wayward offspring,’ cut in Annie, setting the antler-bearing dog down on the floor, and marching over to a pan on the Aga. ‘You must be starving. Parsnip soup okay for you?’
‘Accompanied by my homemade bread,’ chipped in Jake. ‘Thomas and I made it especially for Aunty Amelia, didn’t we, mate?’
Without bothering to raise his head from his elf jigsaw, Thomas nodded gravely.
‘I sometimes help mummy make cakes,’ announced Sophie, without looking up from her colouring-in book.
Amelia gulped. What should she say to that? She’d never made a cake in her life. ‘Well, that’s, um, nice,’ she heard herself murmuring, as she slipped onto the bench opposite her niece.
Sophie cast her an unimpressed glance, before returning to her colouring book.
Thankfully, the moment was broken by Annie.
‘I thought you’d just want to chill this afternoon,’ she said, pushing a spoon and a bowl of steaming-hot soup in front of Amelia. ‘You must be exhausted after the drive. But I’ve arranged a babysitter for tonight. I thought us three grown-ups could go to the pub for a meal. If that’s okay with you.’
Amelia’s already low spirits took a further dip southwards. The last thing she needed was to sit in a noisy pub, surrounded by people, making polite conversation. But to say so would be rude and unsociable. And she didn’t know her sister well enough to be either of those.
‘Lovely,’ she consequently uttered. She hoped the addition of, ‘But I don’t want to be any trouble,’ might permit her a reprieve.
It didn’t.
‘Oh, believe me,’ chuckled Jake, resuming his seat at the table, ‘we don’t find it any trouble going to the pub. Annie practically lives there.’
Annie placed her hands on her slender hips. ‘Er, excuse me, Mr O’Donnell. I’ve been all of half a dozen times this year. Although, now that we have our super-reliable, gorgeous babysitter, I might well increase my visits.’
‘Our babysitter is called Ella and she lets me stay up until nine o’clock, but I’m not allowed to tell anyone,’ Sophie piped up, gazing solemnly at Amelia.
‘Not a soul? Ever?’ pressed Jake.
Sophie shook her head, causing her pigtails to swing from side to side. ‘Nobody. Ever.’
‘You look nice, dear.’
Ella Hargreaves bit back a satisfied smile as she wandered into the kitchen of Stanway House, where her mum sat at the table with a mug of tea and a copy of the local newspaper. ‘Thanks,’ she replied. ‘But it’s only an old pair of jeans and a tatty T-shirt.’
From behind her reading glasses, Mona Hargreaves arched a dubious brow. ‘There’s nothing old or tatty from where I’m sitting. And I hope you’re putting a cardigan on. You’ll catch your death in that top.’
Ella gave a dismissive toss of her long chestnut locks. ‘I’m babysitting, Mum. Which means I’ll be indoors all evening.’
Mona narrowed her eyes. ‘Just watch what you’re doing, that’s all.’
Ella planted a kiss on the older woman’s plump cheek. ‘You worry too much,’ she said, before uttering something about being back about eleven, and making a hasty retreat. Honestly, as much as she loved her mum, it did unsettle her sometimes just how perspicacious the woman could be: like she had x-ray vision that drilled right through to Ella’s mind. Because, as glib as Ella’s reply had been to the “looking nice” comment, she’d actually invested a great deal of effort preparing for this evening.
In addition to the hour banishing every one of her natural, much-hated curls with straighteners, she’d spent an age applying her make-up, including the new glittery green eyeliner and peachy lip gloss she’d bought earlier in the week. By far her most successful purchase during her shopping trip to Harrogate, though, had been the pink push-up bra, which gave her cleavage a boost she previously would only have thought possible with a surgeon’s knife and some silicone implants. Showcasing her newly boosted assets in a low-cut lilac T-shirt, and her long slender legs in faded jeans with the requisite rip at the knee, Ella looped a woollen scarf around her neck and tugged on her khaki parka in the hall, before making her way to The Cedars, excitement swirling about her stomach.
Having left school after her A-levels in the summer, Ella had decided to “take a year out”.
‘Only a year, mind,’ her mum insisted. ‘If you haven’t sorted yourself out by next August, you can enrol in a business studies course. There are always lots of jobs in offices.’
Plenty of jobs in offices there might be, but Ella didn’t want any of them. The thought of pushing bits of paper around for the rest of her life made her nauseous. But she honestly had no idea what she wanted to do. Unlike her siblings. Harry was out in Papua New harr doing something with anteaters for his PhD; Honor and Mark were both studying medicine; Robert was ploughing his way through to becoming a barrister; and Olly had just started his architect’s course. Add to this the fact that her father was a physics professor at Leeds University and her mother a biomedical scientist, and Ella could not have felt like a bigger underachiever if she’d had the words tattooed in neon across her forehead.
While her siblings sailed through life attracting top grades with a magnetic-like force, thriving on the pressure of tests and exams, Ella had been a jittering bag of nerves at every one of her A-level sittings, scraping a measly B and two C’s – embarrassingly not enough for her to be offered a place on the journalism course she’d been considering. The look of disappointment on her parents’ faces when she’d informed them of said results would stay with her for a very long time.
And so Ella had more or less resigned herself to being a failure. And, by taking a year out, knew she was merely