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years and almost two weeks think about someone besides Andy. Think about yourself, Pen. Then do what’s best for both of you.’ 

C HAPTER F OUR
    Penny couldn’t settle after her father left. She picked up her paintbrush and looked critically at the unfinished canvas on her easel. She’d never aspired to be Andy Warhol, but long hours and hard work had eventually paid off. For the last seventeen years she’d made a reasonable living painting book jackets for crime and romance novels. It helped that she’d never had to buy a house or pay rent. Her parents had converted an old barn at the back of the family home into self-contained accommodation for her and her baby before Andy was born.
    They’d refused to allow her to pay rent but she’d insisted on paying her own bills from the outset and, as soon as she could afford to, she’d set money aside to repay them. Before Andy’s sixth birthday she’d cleared the debt. Two years later she’d made enough to rebuild the derelict stables adjoining her barn conversion andturned them into a studio. Since then, she’d brought in enough money to meet her own and Andy’s needs and most of Andy’s wants, as well as set aside savings for Andy’s college fund.
    The background on the jacket of the bodice-ripper she was working on was exotic eastern – the scene tropically garish but the heroine didn’t look right. The publishers had asked for sultry, but the girl she’d painted looked sulky. Penny wondered if it was her fault or that of the model she’d hired to pose in harem dress. She studied the photographs she’d taken at the shoot and couldn’t decide.
    She busied herself mixing fresh paint but even as she lightened and darkened shades on the palette, she knew she was about to make a bad job worse. After scrubbing off a couple of daubs and smudging the canvas, she accepted she wouldn’t do anything worthwhile in her present mood.
    She packed away her paints, cleaned her brushes, hung her smock behind the door, threw a poncho over her shirt and jeans, and left the studio. She’d intended to head for the open mountain, her own and her brothers’ and sisters’ playground when they’d been children. And her sanctuary since the birth of Andy had forced her to accept that she’d ‘grown up’. But something held her back and she found herself standing at her front door.
    She ran up the stairs past the bedrooms and headed for the attic stairs. There were skylights in the roof. It had been boarded out as a playroom-cum-study for Andy. But during the conversion she’d asked the builderto erect a partition wall at the far end. The result was a storage area six feet deep by twenty feet wide. A ‘glory hole’ she and Andy used to house things they no longer needed but couldn’t bear to part with.
    Andy’s study area was unnaturally tidy. His BBC computer unplugged, and his videos stacked in a neat pile next to his video player and TV. A sure sign he’d be away for a few days.
    Penny crossed the room and unlatched the door to the cupboard, fumbling for the light switch because there was no window or loft light in the area. Three of the walls were shelved. As she’d made a point of labelling everything before storing it, and insisted Andy do the same, the labels read like a history of their lives.
    Andy’s high chair, cot, pushchair and baby walker, shrouded in plastic sheeting. Andy’s early Fisher Price toys. Why had she kept them when she could have passed them on to nieces and nephews who were younger than Andy? A desire to bring them out some day, show them to her grandchildren and say ‘your father loved this toy when he was your age’?
    Had she dreamt of a family life for Andy with a wife and children because circumstances had made her a single mother? She turned her back on Andy’s toys and found what she was looking for under a