ONE

      I know I’ve cocked up again when Patty abruptly abandons the milk she’s frothing, and puts her arm around me.

      I swivel my eyes at her in alarm.

      My boss showers her dogs with love. But I’ve worked with her long enough – fourteen years to be precise, from being a Saturday girl at sixteen – to know that she’s fairly reserved when it comes to showing affection for actual people.

      ‘Oh, God.’ I bite my lip and throw a glance at the queue of lunch-time customers. ‘What did I do this time?’

      Patty’s mouth quirks up at the corner. ‘You’ve just given poor Betty spicy tomato pickle with her fruit scone.’

      I glance over in horror.

      Betty, one of our elderly regulars, is removing her coat and settling herself at a corner table, clearly relishing the prospect of taking the weight off her bunions and tucking into a delicious home-baked scone with strawberry jam and cream.

      She’s in for a nasty surprise.

      Patty grabs me before I have a chance to charge over, and the empathy in her eyes almost floors me.

      Ever since Ivy died, I’ve been walking around in a sort of stunned daze, doing things on autopilot. Which is why, I suppose, I gave Betty spicy tomato pickle instead of strawberry jam. And burned my hand on the coffee machine last week. As well as carefully spreading a mountain of rolls with gloopy baking fat before Patty noticed and stopped me. ‘Not sure our customers would appreciate the irony of having lard with their healthy salad sandwiches,’ she remarked dryly.

      In all that time, I haven’t broken down in public even once, but all of a sudden, I’m perilously close to losing it in front of the entire café.

      I dig my nails into my palms, which is meant to distract you from the emotion that’s threatening to knock you flat. It seems to work. And it’s also slightly less weird than crossing your eyes or rolling them around, other suggestions I found online.

      I solve most of my practical problems online. Ivy was hopeless at DIY so I grew up tackling all the odd jobs around the house to save us money. I even fixed a leaky tap once with one of those step-by-step Wiki guides. As a result, I tend not to be daunted by tasks that other people would run a mile from.

      My independent streak seems to baffle men. When they discover my parents died when I was four, they first of all think I must want to talk about it (which I absolutely don’t) and then they try to look after me and protect me from the big bad world. I should probably feel grateful. But instead, it makes me feel suffocated. That’s probably why my romantic history is peppered with fledgling relationships that I’ve ended because the guy wouldn’t give me the space I craved.

      My latest doomed romance ended last summer after Adam, who I actually really liked and thought I might even be in love with, started hinting – after only three months – that we should move in together. He obviously took it as an affront when I said it was a little too early to think about that – because two weeks later, he left me for a glamour model he’d met at his local gym. I told myself I was fortunate to have found out about his shallowness so early on, and I tried not to mind when they got engaged a month after they met. Perhaps I was meant to be alone.

      Ivy once told me I never gave romance a chance and she asked me if I thought I was running away from commitment. It would be natural, she said, after losing my parents so young, to fear the people I love might be snatched away from me.

      Privately, I thought this was simply daft psychobabble. The guys concerned were just not for me, that was all.

      ‘Go and sort Betty out,’ Patty says. ‘And then go away and sort everything else out, okay?’

      ‘But …’ I glance at the queue of people, all staring at us expectantly.

      She shakes her head, gently holding my wrists. ‘No buts, Holly. You were back at work the day after the funeral. Much too soon. And yes, I know the last thing you want to do is make the long journey back down to the Cotswolds and go through Ivy’s things …’

      I swallow. ‘And get Moonbeam Cottage ready to sell.’

      Just saying it makes my insides quiver. Moonbeam Cottage, in the heart of the Cotswolds, was such a huge part of Ivy’s life.

      ‘It has to be done.’ Patty’s tone is gentle but firm. ‘And the sooner the better, don’t you think?’ She pauses. ‘What would Ivy be saying to you now?’

      I smile, tears filming my eyes. I can hear her in my head, speaking with that lovely West Country burr: ‘Don’t you stress yourself, my lover. Everything will be fine. Sooner you get down there, the sooner you’ll be back home again.’

      I always trusted Ivy’s good sense above anyone else’s – except perhaps during those turbulent teen years when we fought as much as any parent and kid. She was a great mix of gentleness, modesty and steely inner strength, and I knew her better than anyone alive.

       But now she’s gone …

      I dig my nails into my palms until it hurts.

      My grandma was special. I was so lucky to have had her in my life.

      Actually, I never thought of her as ‘Grandma’. I always called her Ivy because, in reality, she was far more than just a grandmother; she was Mum, Dad and grandparent all rolled into one.

      She scooped me up when I was four years old, after my parents died, and took us off to live in Manchester. Goodness knows why she chose Manchester. I once asked her why on earth she abandoned her beloved Moonbeam Cottage in the tiny village of Appleton to bring me to a big city where we knew no-one at all. She just laughed, tweaked my nose and said, ‘Isn’t that what fresh starts are all about, my lover?’

      Ivy missed Mum so much – I’d hear her crying at night when she thought I was asleep – but she never ever dwelled on the day of the accident, at least not in my presence. She always said she preferred to look forward, taking me with her on our exciting ride into the future.

      As a child, I piggy-backed on her zest for life; she never let fear get in the way of having an adventure – even though, on a supermarket check-out/school cleaner’s wage, the height of her walk on the wild side was our annual trip to the lights and magic of Blackpool.

      Patty takes hold of my hands. ‘You don’t have to feel guilty about selling Ivy’s cottage, you know.’

      I nod, unable to speak.

      ‘Would you want to live in Appleton? In the heart of the countryside?’ she asks gently.

      ‘No!’ My insides shift queasily at the thought. Visiting Ivy there occasionally I could cope with. But live in Appleton? With all the painful associations I’ve spent most of my adult life trying to push from my mind?

      ‘Look, love, Ivy just wanted you to be happy. She would be right behind you, whether you sold the cottage, rented it out or turned it into a refuge centre for cow-pat-hating city girls like you.’

      I attempt a smile. It’s not the cow pats that are the problem, but I know that, in essence, Patty’s right. Ivy would have loved me to go with her when she moved back to the Cotswolds after she retired. But she understood that my fear of the countryside ran too deep for that. Ivy knew, as no-one else does, that the reason I cling tightly to my life here in the city is because I need to block out the past. It was why Ivy came to visit me in Manchester all the time. She wanted to make things easier for me. (Only rarely did I summon up the courage to go back to Appleton to visit her, and when I did, I could never totally relax.)

      Selling