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unaccountably, produced three huge, cheerful sons with thick, fair hair. Giles and his two brothers adored their mother— and it had been no coincidence that The Pines was in the next-door village to Giles’s old family home. At first, Maggie had been slightly discomfited at the proximity of their new house to her in-laws. But, after all, her own parents were miles away, in Derbyshire and, as Giles had pointed out, it would be useful to have at least one set of grandparents around.
    â€œShe was saying, you’ll have to get to know all the other young mums in the village,” said Giles.
    â€œAre there many?”
    â€œI think so. Sounds like one long round of coffee mornings.”
    â€œOh good!” said Maggie teasingly. “So while you slave away in the City I can sip cappuccinos with all my chums.”
    â€œSomething like that.”
    â€œSounds better than commuting,” said Maggie, and leaned back comfortably. “I should have done this years ago.” She closed her eyes and imagined herself in her kitchen, making coffee for a series of new, vibrant friends with cute babies dressed in designer clothes. In the summers they would hold picnics on the lawn. Roxanne and Candice would come down from London and they would all drink Pimm’s while the baby gurgled happily on a rug. They would look like something from a lifestyle magazine. In fact, maybe the
Londoner
would run a piece on them.
Former editor Maggie Phillips and
her new take on rural bliss.
It was going to be a whole new life, she thought happily. A whole wonderful new life.

    The brightly lit train bounced and rattled along the track, then came to an abrupt halt in a tunnel. The lights flickered, went off, then went on again. A group of party-goers several seats down from Candice began to sing “Why are we waiting,” and the woman across from Candice tried to catch her eye and tut. But Candice didn’t see. She was staring blindly at her shadowy reflection in the window opposite, as memories of her father which she had buried for years rose painfully through her mind.
    Good-Time Gordon, tall and handsome, always dressed in an immaculate navy blazer with gilt buttons. Always buying a round, always everyone’s friend. He’d been a charming man, with vivid blue eyes and a firm handshake. Everyone who met him had admired him. Her friends had thought her lucky to have such a fun-loving father— a dad who let her go to the pub; who bought her stylish clothes; who threw holiday brochures down on the table and said “You choose” and meant it. Life had been endless entertainment. Parties, holidays, weekends away, with her father always at the centre of the fun.
    And then he’d died, and the horror had begun. Now Candice could not think of him without feeling sick, humiliated; hot with shame. He’d fooled everybody. Taken them all for a ride. Every word he’d ever uttered now seemed double-edged. Had he really loved her? Had he really loved her mother? The whole of his life had been a charade— so why not his feelings, too?
    Hot tears began to well up in her eyes, and she took a deep breath. She didn’t usually allow herself to think about her father. As far as she was concerned he was dead, gone, excised from her life. In the midst of those dreadful days full of pain and confusion, she’d walked into a hairdresser’s and asked to have all her long hair cropped off. As the lengths of hair had fallen onto the floor, she’d felt as though her connections with her father were, in some way, being severed.
    But of course, it wasn’t as easy as that. She was still her father’s daughter; she still bore his name. And she was still the beneficiary of all his shady dealings. Other people’s money had paid for her clothes and her skiing trips and the little car she’d been given for her seventeenth birthday. The expensive year off before university—history of