‘We’ve been over this before,’ Alison had been protesting unhappily. ‘I just can’t ask Tabby to move out so that I can offer this place to strangers. She can’t afford decent accommodation-’

‘And whose fault is that? She got pregnant at seventeen and now she’s paying for her foolish mistake!’ Edward had slammed back angrily. ‘Does that mean we have to pay for it too? Isn’t it bad enough that we’re rarely alone together and that when we are you’re always babysitting her kid?’

Tabby was still terribly hurt and mortified by the memory of that biting censure. But she regarded it as justifiable criticism. She felt that she ought to have seen for herself that she had overstayed her welcome in her aunt’s home. She was appalled that Alison should have been prepared to make such a sacrifice on her behalf, for her aunt had already been very generous to her. Indeed, all that Tabby could now think about was moving out as soon as was humanly possible. Only then would Alison feel free to do as she liked with her own life and her own home. At the same time, however, she did not want the other woman to suspect that she might have overheard that revealing dialogue.

‘I’m afraid I still can’t stop wondering why some elderly French lady should have remembered you in her will,’ Alison Davies confided with a bemused shake of her head.

Dragged out of her own preoccupied thoughts by the raising of that topic yet again, Tabby screened her expressive green eyes and looped a stray strand of caramel-blonde hair back behind one small ear. Some things were too personal and private to share even with her aunt. ‘Solange and I got on very well-’

‘But you only met a couple of times…’

‘You’ve got to remember that what she’s left me can only be a tiny part of what she owned because she was very well off,’ Tabby muttered in an awkward attempt to explain. ‘I’m over the moon that she’s left me the cottage but I suppose in her eyes…it was just a little token.’