TRISHA ASHLEY
Creature Comforts

Copyright

Avon

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins 2015

Copyright © Trisha Ashley 2015

Cover design © www.alicemooredesign.com

Cover photograph © Lucy Grossmith/www.heart-to-art.com

Trisha Ashley asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9781847562791

Ebook Edition © February 2015 ISBN: 9780007580446

Version: 2018-04-10

Dedication

For my dear friends and fellow authors, Mary de Laszlo and Norma Curtis, with love.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue: Halfhidden, West Lancashire, 1993

Chapter 1: All Fools’ Day, 2012

Chapter 2: Fault Lines

Chapter 3: Moving Pictures

Chapter 4: Desperate Dogs

Chapter 5: Hounded

Chapter 6: Water Cure

Chapter 7: Regeneration

Chapter 8: Haunting

Chapter 9: Disconnected

Chapter 10: Sparks

Chapter 11: Charming

Chapter 12: Reverse Alchemy

Chapter 13: Disengaged

Chapter 14: Sweetwell

Chapter 15: Mission Statement

Chapter 16: Howling Hetty

Chapter 17: Dog Daze

Chapter 18: Lucky Charm

Chapter 19: Ghosting

Chapter 20: Not So Dusty

Chapter 21: Treasured

Chapter 22: Grimside

Chapter 23: Hidden Hoards

Chapter 24: Close Encounters

Chapter 25: Bird of Passage

Chapter 26: Skulduggery

Chapter 27: Night Passage

Chapter 28: Romantic Comedy

Chapter 29: Floating

Chapter 30: Blighters

Chapter 31: The Stars in Our Eyes

Chapter 32: Stopped

Chapter 33: Dream on

Chapter 34: Old Haunts

Chapter 35: Photo Finish

Recipes

Keep Reading …

Acknowledgements

About the Author

By the Same Author

About the Publisher

Prologue: Halfhidden, West Lancashire, 1993

That evening, Baz Salcombe’s old Range Rover, which was mainly used by his teenage son, Harry, and his friends, passed through the stone gateposts of the Sweetwell estate and paused briefly in the blackest of shadows by the turn to the Lodge, before pursuing an unsteady course up the dark, tree-lined tunnel of the drive.

The road beyond the first sharp bend first hunched itself up and then dipped deeply into a hollow, but either the driver had forgotten that or was recklessly convinced that the car would fly over it, for it suddenly leaped forward with a roar – then the brake lights flashed and it swerved, flipping sideways into the trees with an almighty crash.

The ominous sound, together with the incessant blaring of the jammed horn, carried as far as the Lodge and set off a cacophony of barking from Debo Dane’s Desperate Dogs Refuge. Judy Almond, her friend and housekeeper, who was starting out for the local pub to collect Debo’s niece, Izzy, stopped dead with the car keys in her hand, heart racing.

Tom Tamblyn was halfway down the woodland path that led to his cottage by the Lady Spring when he heard the crash, but Dan Clew, Baz Salcombe’s gardener, was first on the scene, for he’d been so close by that he actually felt the resonance of the impact through the soles of his feet. Arriving at a run, he found the crumpled car lying on its side in a thick tangle of old trees, wheels still spinning and the headlights blazing out at a crazy angle.

The uppermost doors had burst open and, to his great relief, he saw his son Simon climb out and then stagger up the bank, where he slumped with his head in his hands. A girl was screaming hysterically and even before Dan had fished out a torch from his pocket and investigated, he guessed it would be Cara Ferris, the local vet’s daughter.

Cara, her face masked with blood from a deep cut, was already frantically scrambling out of the back seat and it looked as though she’d had a lucky escape, for a branch had impaled the car from front to back, as if preparing to spit-roast it.

Dan moved the torch beam to the front and could see at a glance that his boss’s son, Harry, had taken the brunt of the collision and there was nothing to be done – and the girl slumped next to him had a bad head injury and didn’t look in much better shape. He paused for a moment, looking over his shoulder as if to check for any sign of other rescuers, before reaching in and gathering up her small, slight form.

Tom Tamblyn was just in time to see Dan lift the unconscious figure out of the front of the car, before laying it down on a bit of flat turf next to the drive.

‘Is that young Izzy Dane?’ Tom gasped, still panting for breath, for he was somewhat beyond the age of sprinting up steep paths. ‘Eeh, she looks bad – and you shouldn’t have moved her with that head injury, Dan.’

‘Thought I’d better in case the car goes up – there’s an almighty stink of petrol,’ Dan said shortly, looking up. ‘She was in the front with Harry and they had the worst of it – my lad and the Ferris girl were in the back and got themselves out.’

He nodded at Izzy. ‘If you think she looks bad, you should see Harry.’

‘Like that, is it?’ Tom got out his own torch, took a look inside the car, and came back, shaking his head.

‘Poor lad,’ he said. ‘But he’s in the passenger seat so … are you saying young Izzy was driving? She’s not old enough to have her licence yet.’ He took off his old tweed jacket and laid it over the still figure on the grass, after checking her airways were clear and she still had a pulse.

‘She was in the front next to Harry – it’s clear enough what happened.’

‘Your Simon always drives them back from the pub, though, doesn’t he?’ Tom said. ‘On account of being teetotal.’

‘Not this time.’

‘This is all Izzy’s fault!’ Cara exclaimed hysterically, the wadded hem of her T-shirt held to her bloody face. She’d scrambled up the bank and was sitting next to Simon, who was still slumped with his head in his hands. ‘I’m going to be scarred for life – and Harry?’ Her voice rose shrilly. ‘What’s happened to Harry?’

‘It was Howling Hetty’s ghost that did it!’ Simon slurred, looking up with a face as milk-pale as any wraith, and then he threw up copiously into the grass next to him, narrowly avoiding Cara.

Tom blanched and said uneasily, ‘Nay, never say you’ve seen her!’

‘Of course he hasn’t! Simon, pull yourself together and ring for help, if you haven’t already,’ Dan snapped. ‘What’s the matter with you?’

‘Teetotaller or not, he’s drunk,’ Tom said, fishing a mobile phone the size of a brick out of his trouser pocket and dialling 999.

‘I’d better go down to the Lodge and tell them …’ Dan stopped, glancing at Izzy, still lying unconscious on the grass.

‘No need, they’ll have heard that damned horn and be here any second,’ Tom said. ‘The whole of Halfhidden will have heard it.’

And he was right, for the sound echoing urgently up and down the valley was a siren for a disaster that had ended one young life and would forever change those of the other occupants of the car that night, but most especially Izzy Dane’s.

Chapter 1: All Fools’ Day, 2012

‘Izzy – just the girl I need,’ Harry said as I came level with the Range Rover, heading towards the steep path up through the Sweetwell woods to the Lady Spring and beyond it the Lodge, where I lived with my guardian, Aunt Debo, and her friend and housekeeper, Judy.

He was leaning his tall, skinny frame against the open door of the car, as if he might fall down if he didn’t – and going by the sparkle in his green eyes, he’d drunk more than enough for that.

‘Who, me?’ I asked, pausing uncertainly.

My recurring dream reran its usual course, a brief video clip of a golden evening and four young lives full of hopes and aspirations.

Harry and his friends had seemed so grown up and sophisticated to my sixteen-year-old eyes. They were all about to go their separate ways: Harry to medical school, and quiet, unassuming Simon to study horticulture at a nearby college, while Cara, who’d grown as tall and thin as a beanpole, had only days before been spotted by a top modelling agency and, much to her parents’ dismay, was poised to turn down her place at Oxford.

I always wished I could hang on to the dream long enough to see exactly what madness made me get behind the wheel of that car, but instead I usually woke suddenly, jerked right out of the past, just as I’d been summarily ejected from Heaven when I was in a coma in hospital after the accident …

For once, however, the picture dissolved as slowly as morning mist in the sun and I swam back up into wakefulness and the rattle of the ceiling fan in my Mumbai hotel room … and the unwelcome memory of the previous night’s phone argument with my fiancé, Kieran.

Well, I assumed he was still my fiancé, though that might change once we met up at his parents’ house in Oxford on Monday and I laid on the line exactly what I intended to do next and, more importantly, where I wanted to do it.

It was ironic that our relationship had gone pear-shaped only once we’d finally decided the time was right to stop working abroad and settle down together in the UK. And last night, when I’d told him I’d already invested some of the small legacy left to me by my father into commissioning stock for the online retro clothes shop I was going to set up, he’d been furious, even though I’d never made any secret of my plans.

He was even angrier when I added firmly, ‘And don’t count on the rest, because I’ll probably need all of it to bail Aunt Debo out. The kennels are having a huge financial crisis.’

‘Your aunt’s affairs are always in financial crisis,’ he’d said dismissively. ‘She overreaches herself taking in all those dogs that are too vicious to be rehomed, so there’s no point in throwing good money after bad.’

Then he’d claimed that we’d agreed to use my legacy as part of a deposit on a house, even though we’d never so much as discussed it. And at that point I started to wonder if he’d ever taken in a single thing I’d said to him.

Until we’d visited his parents in Oxford the previous year, he’d certainly never mentioned to me that he had any intention of going back there to live and work. He seemed like an entirely different person once we’d set foot on UK soil …

‘Look, I’ve got to go and pack. We’ll discuss it all on Monday, when I’m back,’ he’d snapped finally, then put the phone down on me.

I felt angry, confused and very upset. Why, over the course of our three-year engagement, had I never realised that the laid-back, good-natured, popular and cheerful Kieran I’d tumbled headlong in love with existed only as long as everyone else was falling in with his plans? But then, we’d spent most of our engagement on separate continents and even when we had managed to make our vacations coincide, we’d spent them on romantic breaks in exotic locations, watching the sun coming up over the Serengeti, or setting over the Taj Mahal, so I suppose it wasn’t really surprising that we appeared to have entirely misread each other’s character.

It was unfortunate that I could never sleep on planes, since the long flight back gave me way too much time to think. Appropriately, it was due to arrive in the UK on 1 April, All Fools’ Day.

I was jammed between two large, sweaty, heavy-drinking businessmen in suits, who sprawled thoughtlessly, legs wide apart and arms akimbo, as if the seat between them was empty. I might have spent the whole journey bolt upright, with my feet together and arms clamped by my sides, except that although small and skinny I have extremely sharp elbows … and also an unfortunate habit of kicking intruding ankles very sharply.

After a few mutterings and dirty looks, to which I responded with sweetly smiling apologies for my nervous tics, they gave in and subsided in opposite directions away from me and I was left to my unwelcome reflections.

The previous night’s argument with Kieran, unsatisfactorily conducted over a patchy phone line, only added to the feeling of acute cold feet I’d recently been developing about our relationship. Now I suspected there was more than a hint of frostbite setting in around my toes.

It wasn’t that I didn’t still have feelings for Kieran – a vision of his blunt-featured face with its slightly wonky, rugby-bashed nose, under a mop of sun-bleached fair hair popped into my mind and slightly weakened my knees, if not my resolve – but did he love me enough to change his plans, rather than assume it would be the other way round?

I suspected not.

When we first met, it felt so right that I thought falling in love with him must be part of my preordained destiny. Even though my best friends, Lulu and Cameron, teased me about my conviction that I had a near-death experience and went to Heaven while I was in a coma after the accident, and was sent back only because I had some important purpose to perform in life, I knew it was real. Since then I just had to tune inwards to the voice of my guardian angel from time to time to check I’d taken the right turning … only with Kieran, I think I must have fallen for him so hard that I misread the message.

My path through life had appeared clearly marked till then, for after studying Textiles and Design, I’d accepted a job with the Women’s World Workshops Foundation, which sent me on assignments all over the world, though the majority were in India. The pay was minimal, but the job satisfaction immense: discovering the skills and artistic heritage of each area and finding ways of utilising them in the making of beautiful garments, the sale of which could transform the lives of the local women involved in the scheme and, through them, those of their families and even their whole communities.

And all the time I was amassing a huge portfolio of colours, designs, patterns, ideas and contacts, ready for the day when I would finally go home for good to Halfhidden, the small village in west Lancashire where I grew up, and set up my own business selling retro-inspired clothes.

Yes, the way forward had unrolled in front of me like an inviting magic carpet … until I literally bumped into Kieran in Pakistan, where he was working as a doctor for a medical charity and I was helping some enterprising local women to set up a co-operative making woven jackets.

It seemed like sheer serendipity that we should have been in the same place at the same time … though not so serendipitous afterwards, since we rarely managed more than snatched days together whenever we could make our leaves coincide.

Perhaps if we’d spent more time in each other’s company, we wouldn’t still have been engaged.

I’d always believed that Kieran was a wonderful doctor who loved his work as much as I loved mine – it was just that until a few months before, he hadn’t mentioned that he’d always intended joining his family’s GP practice in Oxford. When I discovered this, he’d suggested that I could just as easily set up my business there as anywhere else.

But although Oxford was a lovely city, it wasn’t my city. I’m a country girl, used to living on the edge of moorland, a short drive from endless expanses of beaches, not a hemmed-in-by-dreaming-spires one.

And then, Kieran’s parents were a bit of a shock, too. Miranda, his overbearing mother, and Douglas, his sarcastic, know-it-all father, not only assumed I’d fall in with Kieran’s plans, but had already started to look for a house for us. Miranda was even trying to take charge of my wedding, checking out reception venues at stately homes within easy reach of Oxford. That was the last straw.

‘I think you’re being very ungrateful, when my mother’s taking all this trouble,’ Kieran had said, when I’d rung him, furious. Then he’d added that since I was always banging on about my destiny, I should realise that joining his parents’ GP practice was his.

We’d had so many arguments recently and that last one had reached a sort of crisis point, so that although I intended going straight from the airport to Oxford, as we’d arranged, I resolved that when Kieran arrived the following day the discussion was not going to go the way he so clearly expected it to.

Suddenly my inner voice was telling me, loud and clear, to go home to Halfhidden and that I was needed there – not only by Aunt Debo, but also by my friend Lulu.

Lulu had been living in France for years, in an increasingly abusive relationship with an older man called Guy, who’d turned out to be an alcoholic – and since he had his own vineyard, that gave him rather a lot of scope. He hadn’t been physically abusive to her, but instead sapped her spirit and self-confidence over the years with the drip, drip, drip of criticism. Cameron and I had both worried about her, but there wasn’t a lot we could do.

She efficiently ran the self-catering holiday gîtes and B&B rooms in the small manor and outbuildings of the estate, while Guy occupied himself with the making and consumption of wine. I’d visited only once and, on the surface, he’d been jovial, charming and welcoming … though since Lulu, Cam and I emailed each other most days, I knew that he was jealous of any other men who might show an interest in her.

Cameron went out there every summer to teach watercolours at their annual artists’ week, and Guy tolerated his presence because he was under the misguided impression he was gay!

Then, at the end of the last summer school, Guy had been off on a bender and Lulu had finally snapped, packed a bag, grabbed her passport and left with Cam.

Now she was living in a static caravan in the small paddock that had once been occupied by her pony, Conker, behind the Screaming Skull Hotel in Halfhidden, and trying to expand the Haunted Weekend breaks set up by her parents into week-long Haunted Holidays.

‘I need you,’ she’d told me during our last brief phone call. ‘My brother, Bruce, and his wife, Kate, have taken over the pub and restaurant, leaving Mum and Dad to concentrate on the hotel side, and I’m sure they only handed over the management of the Haunted Weekends to give me a role. So my Haunted Holidays simply have to be a success. I need way more ghostly goings-on and you have a better imagination than I do.’

‘Why don’t you ask Cam’s grandfather, Jonas?’ I’d suggested. ‘He told me all kinds of old legends and stories when I was little, so I’m sure he could come up with some ideas – especially if it brings more visitors to the Lady Spring, too. In fact,’ I’d added, ‘why not call a meeting and get other people from the village on board? This could bring visitors to the whole valley, not just the pub.’

‘Great idea,’ she’d enthused. ‘See, I said you have lots of imagination!’

Now she was going to do just that, holding the first meeting on Tuesday evening – so if Kieran and I had the almighty falling-out tomorrow that I suspected was on the cards, I’d be back in time for it.

‘I’m so looking forward to seeing you again,’ Lulu had said. ‘Do you know, it’s been nearly four years? And Cam hasn’t seen you for even longer. It’s lovely that Cam has moved back here too, but it’s not the same when it isn’t the three of us.’

‘No, you’re right,’ I’d agreed, and then suddenly I’d longed even more to be at Halfhidden again, that Shangri-La of my childhood. It was pulling me back and, despite what had happened in the past, it would always be the place where I felt I truly belonged.

I got off the plane in much the same sticky and dishevelled state I’d got onto it, though at least I’d sent most of my heavy luggage on to Halfhidden and only had one suitcase with me.

Kieran’s father was meeting me, which made me feel a little awkward, anticipating the next day’s full and frank discussion. I wasn’t sure what would happen after that, except I’d be going straight home, leaving the ball in Kieran’s court.

There had been no getting out of it, though: Douglas had to be in London for some meeting or seminar the day before, and had stayed up to have lunch with friends before heading home, and he’d insisted on collecting me from Heathrow on his way back to Oxford.

‘Rough journey?’ he said, after failing to recognise me until I went right up to him. This lack of tact only hardened my resolve as we set off towards Oxford, and since I was thinking ahead to what I was going to say to him and Miranda when we arrived, it was a while before I noticed he was driving very fast … and also, unless he’d taken to using whisky as an aftershave, he’d been drinking.

And on that very thought, even though we were just approaching a sharp bend, Douglas recklessly swung out to overtake a lorry – straight into the path of a small blue car coming the other way.

There wasn’t enough room to get past and Douglas jammed on the brakes, jerking me sharply forward … Then the weirdest thing happened. It was as if, for just a second, the fabric of time ripped open and I fell through, right into the Range Rover on the night Harry Salcombe died.

Then, equally suddenly, I was catapulted out again, into a gentle, familiar bright light, filled by a soft susurration of wings and a hint of celestial music …

I found I was now hovering above the car, which had spun right round and was facing back the way we’d come, while the small blue one was in a ditch. I could see myself sitting like a statue in the passenger seat, eyes wide with shock, and hear the thin thread of Douglas’s voice, as if through water.

‘Come on, Izzy, be quick – change places with me!’ he demanded, pulling at my arm urgently, as if he could drag me across into the driver’s seat. ‘Izzy, come on, I’ll lose my licence,’ he snapped. ‘Pull yourself together, you’re not hurt.’

Then he sharply slapped my face and instantly I was back in my body and gasping with shock, partly at the blow and partly from once again being wrenched back from Heaven.

Chapter 2: Fault Lines

‘By then other drivers had stopped and the police were there in minutes,’ I said, trying to describe the scene to Daisy Silver, one of Aunt Debo’s oldest friends. ‘An ambulance came soon after, and then it all got a bit confusing.’

‘I expect it did, after such a shock,’ Daisy said in her calm, warm voice, pouring me a mug of coffee and pushing it across the wide, battered pine table in the cosy basement kitchen of her Hampstead house.

Her ample curves were enveloped in a familiar old rubbed purple velvet kaftan and she had loosened the thick plait of hair that usually circled her head like a silver crown so that it hung down her back to her waist … or where her waist would have been, had she had one.

‘Douglas is an awful man! I mean, he’s a doctor, yet instead of getting out to see if the people in the other car needed any help, he just kept on and on at me to say I was driving. Luckily no one was seriously injured, but the mother and two small children in the other car were really shaken up.’

‘He does seem to have entirely disregarded his Hippocratic oath,’ she agreed drily.

‘Yes and even when the police were questioning him, he insisted the driver of the other car was at fault and wanted me to back him up.’

‘Which I’m assuming you didn’t?’

‘No, of course not. I told them it was entirely his fault for overtaking on a bend and then, of course, he was even more furious with me. When they breathalysed him, he was way over the limit, so they charged him with drink-driving as well as dangerous driving and goodness knows what else … though, come to think of it, I didn’t tell them about him asking me to pretend to have been the driver.’

‘It sounds like he’ll be in enough trouble without that, so I wouldn’t worry about it.’

‘It would be just my word against his anyway, wouldn’t it?’

She nodded. ‘What happened next?’

‘We had to go to the police station, but eventually they said I could go, so I got into a taxi and came here. I never gave a thought to how much the fare would cost until we arrived, but I’ll pay you back tomorrow.’ I clamped my hands around the mug of hot coffee.

‘That’s not important, and you know I’m always glad to see you, whatever the reason.’

‘I do, and it seemed natural to head here,’ I said gratefully, for as well as knowing Daisy from her frequent visits to stay with us in Halfhidden, I’d spent several weeks convalescing with her after the original accident when I was sixteen. She was a child psychiatrist by profession, but I hadn’t been her patient; it was just that Debo had thought a total change of scene would do me good.

‘Very sensible,’ she approved. ‘In fact, you behaved extremely well, given the shock you’d had.’

‘It could easily have been a fatal crash.’ I shivered. ‘All because he drank too much and drove like an idiot.’

‘Health professionals have all the human failings, just like anyone else,’ Daisy said. ‘But I’m horrified he should have asked you to change places in the car with him.’

‘I don’t suppose Kieran ever told him about the accident I was involved in – in fact, Douglas probably doesn’t even know I can’t drive.’

‘He should never have thought of asking you, whether he did or not. It’s wonderful that the family in the other car weren’t hurt.’

She smiled at me and pushed over the open tin of coffee-iced biscuits. ‘Have some soothing sugar.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, taking one and crunching into the crisp coating.

For a few moments we munched in amicable silence.

Then Daisy said with her usual acuity, which I suppose was a vital component of her success as a psychiatrist, ‘Did something else happen, Izzy?’

‘Yes – or rather, two things happened just as we hit the other car. One of them was that I briefly went back to Heaven, like I did after the first accident … and then I was right out of my body, looking down.’

‘So you went through the bright tunnel again?’ she asked, interested.

‘There wasn’t any tunnel this time, I was just momentarily enveloped by light and colour and a strange kind of music … it was lovely. But right before that, just as we struck the other car …’

I tailed off, trying to frame the words for what I had experienced, and Daisy didn’t push me. Any more than she had when I’d arrived by taxi half an hour before in a distressed condition, and she’d merely greeted me with her usual, ‘Oh, there you are, Izzy! Come in,’ as if I was the most welcome and expected visitor in the world.

She’d always made me feel that way, especially when I was convalescing with her after that first dreadful accident. It was during that stay, after a trip to the V&A Museum, that I’d developed the consuming interest in textiles that eventually enabled me to help other women escape from grinding poverty. If you looked, there seemed to be a reason for everything that happened in life, good or bad … and that thought brought me back full circle to what I needed to say.

I looked up at her familiar apple-cheeked, wise face with its clever dark eyes. ‘It was the weirdest thing, Daisy, just as if time was a curtain that ripped open to let me slip through – because suddenly, I was there in the Range Rover on the night of the accident when Harry … when I …’

‘That’s interesting,’ Daisy said, ‘because you had no recollection of even getting into the car, let alone subsequent events.’

‘So you think it was a memory?’

‘Possibly, because a sudden shock can bring back things the subconscious has hidden – though it can also create new “memories”,’ she gently suggested.

‘You mean, I might have imagined the scene I saw? But it seemed so real! We were going along the lane up towards the Green and the others, Harry, Cara and Simon, were all singing. They’d been celebrating their exam results and Harry wanted me to go back to Sweetwell Hall with them to a party, but I’d already told him I couldn’t. If I wasn’t home by ten, Judy would go down to the pub to look for me … and that’s the last real memory of that evening I have.’

Aunt Debo, who had become my guardian after my mother’s early demise, had tended to lose track of my movements and the passing of time, while Judy, her best friend, who’d originally moved in to help with the childcare but never left, was more practical and firmly set the boundaries a teenager needed.

‘Judy was surprised you’d disobeyed her, but we knew Harry must have persuaded you. But to return to the flashback you had, if everyone was singing and happy, that was a good memory?’

‘I suppose so,’ I said, and though I think she guessed I was still holding something back, she didn’t press me. I changed tack.

‘I had another argument with Kieran on the phone last night and I’d decided things weren’t going to work out – or not the way he wanted them to – so I was going to have it out with him tomorrow, when he got back.’

‘You did seem unhappy about the way his parents were taking over your plans, last time we spoke.’

‘That was certainly part of it. Do you know, his mother had even started planning a huge wedding in Oxford, when I’d told her I’d always dreamed of a small one in the Halfhidden church.’

‘Well, Izzy, you certainly couldn’t have a big one in St Mary’s, because it can’t hold more than about thirty people at once, can it? And it’s your wedding, so you must have it where you want it.’

‘Or not at all. And there’s more. They’ve found us a house round the corner from theirs, which they think I’m going to put that legacy from my father into. Kieran can’t see any problem with any of that. In fact, he’s entirely failed to see my viewpoint at all, and last night after we argued he put the phone down on me!’

‘I’m very sorry to hear it isn’t working out, but it’s better to find out whether you’re entirely compatible before you get married, rather than afterwards,’ Daisy said. ‘If Kieran’s set on joining the family GP practice in Oxford, you’d definitely have to see a lot of his parents.’

I shuddered. ‘I don’t even want to live in Oxford.’

‘It’s a very lovely place.’

‘I know, only it’s not my place.’ I tried to explain. ‘I know I wasn’t born in Lancashire, but despite what happened there, Halfhidden still feels like home and the one place where I truly belong. It … pulls me back.’

‘You were only about five when Debo and Baz Salcombe became an item and you all moved into Sweetwell Hall with him, so you probably don’t recall much before that.’

‘No, nothing at all. I think I remember Judy and I had our own suite in the Victorian wing of Sweetwell, where the housekeeper and her family live now, but mostly my memories are of after the affair finished, when we all moved to the Lodge.’

‘Debo does have the knack of staying best friends with her former lovers,’ Daisy said with a smile. ‘And it made sense to stay in the country, because by then she and Judy had got about eight or nine rescued dogs between them, way too many for town.’

‘Baz liked dogs, too,’ I said. ‘He never minded when Debo’s escaped and ran around the estate, or that she extended the kennels beyond the garden into the grounds.’

‘He was a very likeable, easy-going man,’ Daisy agreed, for she had got to know him on her frequent visits to the Lodge.

I sighed sadly. ‘He was, and the nearest to a father figure I’ve ever had. I missed him so much after he went to live abroad …’

Baz had been so broken by the loss of his only child that he’d shut up Sweetwell and gone to live permanently in his beachfront house in the Bahamas, leaving the housekeeper as caretaker and Dan Clew to look after the garden and keep an eye on the wooded grounds.

Baz had rarely visited after that and never at times that coincided with my visits, though he and Debo had always remained friends – and occasionally, I suspected, more than friends.

‘Kieran absolutely idolises his father,’ I said, following this train of thought. ‘So he’s going to be a bit upset about the accident, though I don’t know if Douglas will tell him I refused to take the blame for it.’

‘If he does, since Kieran knows about your history, he’ll hardly be surprised about that. And if he truly loves you, he’ll be more concerned with how it’s affected you.’

‘I’m not at all sure he really does love me, and in any case, when push came to shove, he seemed quite prepared to override what I wanted to please his parents.’

‘It certainly sounds to me as if you two at least need some breathing space apart,’ Daisy said. ‘Things will seem clearer then and you may even find that you do have a future together.’

‘Perhaps,’ I said doubtfully. ‘But if so, it definitely wouldn’t be in Oxford. And not only have I already used some of this legacy they seemed to have been counting on, I’ll probably have to bail Debo out with the rest.’

‘Oh, I don’t think it will come to that. Debo does stagger from financial crisis to crisis, but she always manages to raise the money she needs from somewhere,’ she said, surprised. ‘I mean, for a start she can get as much modelling work as she wants and she often pops down to stay with me for various assignments.’

Debo had been a famous model in the sixties and seventies, and even though she was now the wrong side of sixty, she was still much in demand. Tall, thin and elegant, with huge grey doe-eyes and cropped ash-blonde hair, she hadn’t changed much since her heyday. Judy always told me I looked like a miniature version of Debo, but with my father’s dark colouring and lack of height, though I think she was just being kind …

‘Debo hates leaving the dogs though, so if she’s been down a lot recently it shows how bad things have got – and this time there’s no Baz to come to the rescue,’ I pointed out. ‘She was devastated when he died so suddenly – not to mention the shock of finding out the whole estate had been left to some illegitimate son she’d never heard of!’

‘Actually, when she rang to tell me, the main shock seemed to be more that Baz must have had a fling with Fliss Gambol, an old enemy of hers from her early modelling days, even though it was before Debo took up with him,’ Daisy said. ‘Even worse, she’s always blamed Fliss for your mother’s death.’

‘Oh? In what way?’ I asked, puzzled. I knew from Debo that my mother had been sweet, but a bit of a wild child and died young from an accidental drug overdose. I was the result of a brief fling with a married American artist twice her age. Although he’d known about me, we’d had minimal contact until, to my surprise, he’d left me a little bit of money a few years ago. ‘Fliss Gambol was some sixties singer, wasn’t she?’

‘Yes, until drink and drugs got the better of her. Lisa, your mother, was very young when she came to live with Debo after your grandmother died and, unfortunately, she fell in with Fliss’s crowd and under her influence.’

‘That makes it a bit clearer,’ I said. ‘I can see now why Debo would be upset … and Fliss’s circle must have seemed very glamorous and irresistible to an impressionable young girl, so I understand better how she came to such a tragic end. Poor Lisa!’

I sighed. ‘This must have raked up some unhappy memories for Debo. Baz always promised he’d leave her the Lodge and the land round it where she’s extended the kennels, and instead this son of Fliss Gambol has scooped the lot!’

‘She does have the Lodge for life, though, and Baz may have thought if he left her any money she’d spend it on even more dogs,’ Daisy said astutely. ‘Or if he gave her the Lodge outright, she’d mortgage it.’

‘Perhaps,’ I admitted, because Debo did tend to pour every penny that came her way (except for what Judy could snatch away for housekeeping) on her Debo’s Desperate Dogs Refuge. ‘Anyway, I’ll have to see when I get home. With Baz’s son having all the land, she won’t be able to keep as many dogs.’

‘I can’t see her being happy about that,’ Daisy said. ‘And I don’t think she’ll want to take any of the money your father left you, either, however desperate things are.’

‘We’ll see,’ I said, sitting up straighter. ‘You know, I believe meeting Kieran was a wrong turn. I confused what I wanted with what I was supposed to be doing.’

Daisy smiled. ‘I think it all comes down to following your heart. But sometimes you also need to use your head.’

‘Both seem to be telling me to go back to Halfhidden and set up my mail-order company there. I want to go home at last, and not go away ever again,’ I finished.

Daisy regarded me thoughtfully. ‘Hmm … that might still be the shock talking and the cold feet about the wedding. But time will tell.’

‘It will – and there’s something else I’m going to do when I get home, that I should have done years ago: I’m going to meet the past head-on,’ I said with new resolution.

‘You mean, the accident?’

‘Yes, I want to fill in the blank bits and try to understand why I was driving that night. I mean, I remember clearly that I was working in the pub with Lulu and Cam and that I left to walk home early, because my old dog, Patch, was ill. And then in the car park I passed the red Range Rover and Harry invited me to the party at Sweetwell. I told him I couldn’t, though that bit’s fuzzy … and then I remember absolutely nothing until I came out of the induced coma in hospital weeks later.’

‘But you’ve been told what happened?’

‘Yes, mainly by Lulu and Cameron, because by the time I’d convalesced with you and got home again, no one ever mentioned it to me – it was like the elephant in the room. Even Judy and Debo didn’t want to talk about it.’

‘Well, they did think at one point they’d lost you, so it isn’t surprising that they wanted to put the whole tragedy behind them.’

‘Perhaps, but because I can’t remember what happened, it’s always made it very hard for me to accept what I did and move on. So now I’m going to talk to those most involved, especially Cara and Simon. I haven’t seen Simon since then and Cara’s always avoided me, or cut me dead. Lulu says it’s because she blamed me for the scar on her face that ended her hope of being a model,’ I added. ‘Lulu and I were amazed when she married Sir Lionel Cripchet after she left Oxford University, because he is more than twice her age and horrible! But his estate, Grimside, is only the other side of the hill from Halfhidden, so at least it means she lives nearby.’

‘I can see where you’re coming from and the need for closure,’ Daisy said, ‘but sometimes it really is better to let things lie. Cara’s anger is probably based on guilt because she was sober enough to realise that you shouldn’t be driving, yet she let Harry persuade you.’

‘If I really was driving,’ I said, looking up at her. ‘Because the thing is, Daisy, in that flashback I had, I wasn’t. I was in the back seat, with Cara.’

‘Darling,’ she said, leaning across and squeezing my hand, ‘that might not have been a genuine flashback, because don’t forget that the first two people on the scene after the crash said you were in the driver’s seat, didn’t they?’

‘Yes, though I don’t trust Simon’s father, Dan Clew, in the least … but Tom Tamblyn said so too, so I suppose you’re right,’ I sighed. ‘Tom has always been my friend.’

A message popped into my phone and I looked at it for a long moment. ‘Kieran. His mother must have got hold of him and – well, he’s not pleased with me, let’s put it like that. She’s on her way to spring Douglas from the clink, but Kieran says his father will lose his driving licence and probably be prosecuted, so it will make his life very difficult.’

‘That’s not your fault, is it? I expect Kieran will see sense once he’s had time to think of it from your viewpoint.’

‘He’ll have to, because I’m not shouldering the blame for things I didn’t do, when I still have to come to terms with the things I did,’ I said.

Before I went to bed I rang Lulu.

‘I’m sorry it’s all gone horribly wrong,’ she said when I’d told her my news, ‘but I’m really glad you’re coming home because we all need you! And if you’re back tomorrow, you can be at my Halfhidden Regeneration Scheme meeting on Tuesday, can’t you? It’s in the Village Hut.’

‘Regeneration?’ I echoed and she said mysteriously that she’d taken some of my ideas about involving the whole village and run with them.

‘Cam has to teach an evening watercolour class in Ormskirk, so he’ll probably get there only for the very end of the meeting, though he knows all about it. He’s been helping me draw up maps and stuff. So I’ll really need your support,’ she added, refusing to be drawn on the details.

‘Are you upset about Kieran?’ she asked.

‘Yes – no, I don’t know,’ I confessed. ‘I did fall in love with him and … somehow, I seem to have just as suddenly fallen out of love again. Or perhaps I fell in love with a Kieran who didn’t really exist.’

‘I know the feeling,’ she said sadly. ‘I never want to fall in love again. My friend Solange says that that woman Guy’s living with keeps coming into the café and crying into her coffee, and it’s rumoured they’re having huge rows.’

Lulu’s ex, Guy, was still occupying the house in the Dordogne from which she’d finally fled. He’d assumed she’d left because she’d found out about his affair, but she’d had no idea till afterwards, when her friend in the village told her the woman had moved in. Still, at least it meant that he left her alone.

‘I can’t say I’m surprised,’ I said.

‘No, Guy was always a mistake – a controlling, bullying mistake, and I’m glad I got away.’

‘With Cam,’ I said slightly pointedly, for I knew their old friendship had taken a slightly different turn on their journey home from France.

‘Cam has been a huge comfort to me, but we don’t want to rush into anything and spoil the friendship we have … I mean, it’s always been the three of us, hasn’t it? And we all need space to get our lives back on track.’

‘True,’ I agreed. ‘Time will tell – about many things!’

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