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almost apologetically. “But, that won’t be for around nine months. It might even be a year.”
    Joy sat upright, and glanced around at her mother, who appeared to have relaxed. She was almost smiling, a patronizing smile, the kind of smile that said, Oh, young people—they might think they’re in love, but let’s see what happens six months down the line. Alice wanted to be proven right, Joy realized, feeling cold. She wanted the affirmation that true love didn’t exist, that everyone ended up in marriages as miserable as her own. Well, if they thought this was going to put her off they were wrong.
    â€œThen I’ll see you in nine months,” she said to the blue eyes of her new fiancé, trying to convey as much certainty into her own as she knew she felt. “Just—just write.”
    The door opened.
    â€œGod save the Queen!” said Bei-Lin, entering with a tray of drinks.

CHAPTER ONE
    October 1997
    K ate’s windscreen wipers finally gave up just outside Fishguard, sticking, and then sliding resignedly down toward the bonnet, at the exact moment that the rain, which had been satisfied with simply heavy, chose to become torrential.
    â€œOh, bugger,” she said, swerving as she flicked the dashboard switch up and down. “I can’t see a thing. Sweetheart, if I pull over at the next lay by, could you reach your arm out and give the screen a wipe?”
    Sabine pulled her knees up into her chest and scowled at her mother. “It’s not going to make the slightest difference. We might as well just stop.”
    Kate pulled the car to a stop and wound down her window, trying to wipe her own half with the end of her velvet scarf. “Well, we can’t stop. We’re running late. And I can’t have you missing the ferry.”
    Her mother was a generally mild-mannered soul, but Sabine knew that note of steel in Kate’s voice, and knew that it said nothing short of a tsunami was going to prevent Sabine getting on that ferry. It was not a huge surprise; it was a note she had come up against many times in the past three weeks, but having to hear yet another reinforcement of her ultimate powerlessness in the face of her mother made Sabine’s lower lip jut unconsciously, and her body turn away in mute protest.
    Kate, finely tuned to her daughter’s mercurial moods, glanced over, noted it, and looked away. “You know, if you weren’t so busy being determined to hate this, you might just have a good time.”
    â€œHow can I have a good time? You’re sending me to a place I’ve been to all of twice in my whole life, to stay in Bog City, with a grandmother you like so much you haven’t seen her in bloody years, basically to be some kind of domestic skivvy while my grandfather pops his clogs. Great. Some holiday. I’m just gagging for it.”
    â€œOh, look. They’re working again. Let’s see if we can make it to the port.” Kate wrenched the wheel, and the battered Volkswagen lurched forward onto the wet road, sending tea-colored fans of spray up at each side window. “Look. We don’t know that your grandfather is that ill; he’s just frail, apparently. And I just think it will be good for you to get away from London for a bit. You’ve hardly met your granny at all, and it will be nice for you to see a bit of each other before she gets too old, or you go traveling, or whatever.”
    Sabine stared determinedly out of her side window.
    â€œGranny. You make it sound like Happy Families.”
    â€œAnd I know she’s ever so grateful for the help.”
    Still she refused to look. She knew bloody well why she was being shipped off to Ireland, and her mother knew it, and if she was such a bloody hypocrite that she wasn’t going to admit it, then she couldn’t expect Sabine to be straight with her, either.
    â€œLeft lane,” she said, still not turning