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centre. There was another of Jack and a couple of guys standing by a giant table and chairs. It was obviously some extravagant commission – all laid out with oversized teacups and plates.
    It was the last photo that surprised her. Taken the morning of the festival. She remembered it because she’d been midway through doing her make-up when she was yanked into the picture, so had one big, spidery mascaraed eye and one nude one. It was her, her brother Wilf, Jack, Holly, Annie, Annie brother’s Jonathan and Jack’s younger brother, Ed. They were standing out the front of Enid’s ice cream van holding up the Cherry Pie Festival banner that Annie had painted and was about to be pinned to the gates of Mont Manor. Emily had cherry blossom in her hair. Holly was cross-legged on the floor in front of Wilf. Annie was looking away at something else. Jack was in the centre, beaming, his arms spread wide behind him, one hand resting on Emily’s shoulders, the other on his little brother Ed’s.
    She realised she’d been staring and couldn’t work out how much time had passed. Probably only a couple of seconds but it felt like minutes. Bypassing how annoyingly young and fresh her skin looked, she saw how goddamn happy she’d been, how open. Even how she was standing for the camera, just full-square at the lens regardless of her bonkers eye make-up. She didn’t stand like that any more, she stood with one foot forward, body angled to the left, chin raised a touch, a half-smile that didn’t show too much teeth.
    When she got back outside, Jack said, ‘You took your time.’
    Emily hung the blanket round her shoulders and sat down, it smelt of the smell of him that she remembered from being a teenager. Like getting a whiff of your old perfume and reeling back through a thousand thoughts and feelings that you can’t quite catch. ‘I was looking at the photos by your bed,’ she said, letting her head roll to the side so she could look at him. ‘Of all of us at the festival.’
    Jack turned to look at her. ‘It was a long time ago.’
    ‘I know,’ she said. ‘It’s hard to think what the me then would think of the me now. You know?’
    ‘I think she’d think you were pretty OK.’
    ‘Yeah but would she have expected her most well-known achievement to have been being humiliatingly jilted? Probably. Or ending up living back here?’ she paused and smiled, ‘Probably. Jack, have you been married?’ she asked, expecting him to shake his head.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Oh.’
    He glanced at her and then back at the river. ‘But not any more.’
    She took a moment to take that in. It shouldn’t have shocked her at all. Of course he could get married. He could have a couple of kids for all she knew. But it wasn’t the admittance of marriage that took her by surprise, it was the sharp catch in her chest when he said it. Almost like jealousy. Which, of course, she thought as she sipped her warm brandy, was completely ridiculous.

Chapter Eight
    Two weeks later and Emily had roped in a motley crew to help on her house. With most of her money ploughed into buying the manor and back into her EHB Cosmetics business, she was relying on whoever she could get to help put the place back to normal. Jack had stuck firm to his original refusal. And she hadn’t seen him again to persuade him, so Emily currently had Holly’s dad in as a handyman, ripping out the dreadful kitchen cupboards and pod island unit. He was also going to attempt to get rid of the dropped ceilings and spotlights and hopefully get back to the original Georgian ceilings she remembered. The back windows in the kitchen she couldn’t do much about at the moment but he would take down the white plantation shutters that they’d added to every other window on the downstairs floor. He was working alongside one of the builders, Eric, that Annie had hired to fix the roof of the Dandelion Cafe, who was in London from Norfolk for a month and happy to work on anything for as many