She hesitated.

The fingers drummed.

The man looked angry as well as impatient.

He wasn’t alone in his anger. Kirsty glanced across at her sister. She wouldn’t get Susie back here tomorrow, she thought. Susie’s expression was one of hopelessness.

Where was the laughing, bubbly Susie of a year ago?

Kirsty wanted her back. Fiercely, desperately, Kirsty mourned her twin.

Her anger doubled. Quadrupled.

Exploded.

She killed the engine.

‘What…?’ Susie started, but Kirsty was already out of the car. Her car was half off the cobblestones and there was a puddle right beside the driver’s door. She’d climbed out carefully last time but this time she forgot about the puddle. She squelched in mud to her ankle.

She hardly noticed. How dared he drum his fingers at her?

In truth her anger was caused by far more than merely drumming fingers, but the fingers had a matching face, a target for the pent-up grief and frustration and fear of the last few months. Too much emotion had to find a vent somewhere.

The drumming fingers were it.

She marched up to the Land Rover, right to the driver’s side. She hauled open the door of the vehicle so hard she almost yanked it off its hinges.

‘Right,’ she told him. ‘Get out. I want some answers and I want them now.’

He should have been home two hours ago.

Dr Jake Cameron had spent the entire day sorting out trouble, and he had more trouble in front of him before he could go home that night. As well as the medicine crowding at him from all sides, there was also the fact that his girls were waiting. The twins were fantastic but he’d stretched their good nature to the limit. Mrs Boyce would have to put them to bed again tonight; she’d be upset at not getting home to Mr Boyce, and he winced at the idea that he’d miss yet another bedtime.

Who needed a bedtime story most? The twins or himself?