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be useful?”
    Ellie’s pride made her react abruptly. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “That’s so kind, but I couldn’t.”
    “No worries,” Tony said. “Make the most of them. Good idea.”
    “No!” Ellie repeated. “The girls don’t need to see me wearing their mother’s clothes. Neither do you two. Thanks, but no.”
    “The girls,” Ginny said softly, “have never seen their mother in any of these. As I said, brand new. Never worn. I’ve no idea what to do with them. They’re far too good for the charity shop where I sent all the rest. And I don’t think trying to re-sell them is quite appropriate.”
    “At least have a look at them,” Tony urged.
    Ellie bowed her head. “Thank you. But...I don’t want handouts. I can provide for myself.”
    “I’m sure you can, dear,” Ginny said. “But what am I to do with these otherwise? There are a couple of dresses from Paris. Some lovely knitted tops. What size shoes do you take?”
    Ellie sighed, thinking of her battered old sandals and scuffed trainers. “Eight,” she murmured, pink with embarrassment. It would be the final straw—being reduced to wearing his dead wife’s clothes.
    “About a European forty? Worth trying, then. None of it fits me.” Ginny patted her ample hips. “We’ll have a look in a minute. Robbie can put the coffee on while we go up and see.”
    Ellie nodded her unwilling agreement. If no-one else needed them, she should accept them in the spirit they were offered. She had so little left right now. But it was galling to be an object of pity in front of Tony.
    “Have you got a party dress with you?” he asked. “It’s the local pre-Christmas knees-up this Saturday night. That’s why I’m going over to Bob’s—he and Penny are heading up the committee this year.”
    “I’m not invited, surely?” she asked, knowing she absolutely didn’t have a dress suitable for a big country get-together.
    “You’ll be home on your own if you don’t join us,” Ginny said. “Or had you planned to go and see your—”
    “No, not this weekend,” Ellie interrupted hastily. “There’s—um—maybe the weekend following.”
    “We’ve got to wear dresses, too,” Caro said glumly as she returned to the table with her picture book.
    “And I want my hair like Ellie’s,” Ants added, reaching up to stroke the shining waves cascading onto the shoulders of Ellie’s lemon T-shirt.
    “But how’s anyone going to tell you apart with no ponytail ribbons?” Ellie teased.
    “So you’ll come with us?” Tony said. It was barely a question. Ellie tensed, unused to being included so firmly in other people’s plans. She turned to him, ready to argue. And stopped dead at the look in his eyes.
    The late slanting sun lit half his face. On that side his skin was warmly tanned, firm along his jaw-line. But the rest of him was cast in shade. And both eyes were now so desolate that something hard and cold hit her deep inside.
    He was lonely. He was hurting. And that made him so much more dangerous. An arrogant flirt she could probably resist, but a grieving friend was a different matter altogether.
    Swamped with conflicting emotions, she pushed to her feet. “I’ll clear the table,” she said, with far too much enthusiasm. Anything to escape those dark haunted eyes.

CHAPTER FOUR
     
    Dresses from Paris! Ellie ran her hands down the sides of the simple biscuit-coloured linen shift which Ginny had persuaded her to slip into; it was loose enough to skim the curves of her body elegantly, and a wonderful foil for her dark hair. It was a far cry from the chain-store clothes she was used to—or the church shop finds her mother sometimes pressed on her.
    There was an emerald green silk party dress, too—bodice cut on a slant to reveal one shoulder. Several pretty knitted tops, striped and plain. And a lightweight wool crepe suit in palest grey, with impossibly fine braiding on the cuffs and lapels. Ellie could think of no event in her