Chapter One

      ‘Ow.’

      ‘Stop moving.’

      ‘Ow.’

      ‘Jesus, you’re hopeless.’ Emily paused, allowing Jane to sit forward for a moment and rub her eyebrows as she stood waiting, brandishing a pair of gold glitter tweezers from her own brand EHB cosmetics range. ‘You can have these when I’m finished,’ she said. ‘My gift to your poor eyebrows. Now let’s get on with it,’ she added and carried on her ferocious plucking.

      Two days before, none of this had even been on the horizon. Jane had spent the morning poring over her late-mother’s accounts with her feet dangling over the edge of her houseboat, her toes just touching the water, having a cup of tea and a crumpet. Her main focus had been how on earth her mum had kept a massive savings account from her and never spent a penny of it while they’d lived together in a boat that was no wider than a person lying flat on their back and long enough for one bedroom, a living area with a sofa and a tiny kitchen at the far end where they stored all the kitchen paraphernalia in hatches in the floorboards. Her whole life, pretty much, she’d slept on the sofa, packing up her bedding every morning and stowing it in a drawer underneath. In the savings account was enough to build another story on this place and more.

      But her mother wasn’t here any more to ask about the money so instead she had studied the statements, phoned the bank to check it wasn’t a mistake, packed it all back up again in the bulging manila folder tied with string and tried not to let the mystery overtake her. She knew better than to try and rationalise anything to do with her mother. Jane had spent a lifetime being prepared for the unexpected. Perhaps that was why she got on so well with Emily – someone else who lived their life by completely their own rules.

      ‘This is no good.’ Emily paused, having plucked both brows into perfect arches. ‘It’s not enough.