her tiny sister to ‘carefully, carefully, carefully, Maria!’ stand them on a tray Nan brought in.
Nan slid the arm without the cast through Nico’s and kept him in the doorway to watch the girls. ‘She didn’t say “don’t tell Nico”,’ she said in her hoarse voice. ‘I think you ought to know what your ex-mother-in-law’s done. She’s a piece of work, by the sounds of it.’
His head whipped round. ‘What? Yes, she is.’ Every muscle tensed.
The wizened skin around Nan’s lips quivered. ‘She’s got our Hannah thinking she’s a tart who’s been leading you astray.’ She blotted her eyes with her sleeve. ‘She called her your “entertainment”.’
Nico swore viciously – in Swedish, so he didn’t have to hold back.
Nan’s voice creaked more than usual. ‘She’s gone away!’
‘Where?’ he demanded.
Nan’s lip quivered. ‘She wouldn’t say.’
On Monday, Nico spent a lot of time thinking. He rang Maria’s case worker, Gloria, who said she was in the area and would like to call in and see how the girls had enjoyed Sweden. The girls were happy to tell her all about it – Josie in entire sentences and Maria in exclamations. ‘Snowman! Wolf!’ Then Nico took Gloria in the kitchen while the girls watched TV in the tiny sitting room and he told her quietly about Loren’s pleas. It was good to open up to someone unbiased yet experienced. Not as good as a heart-to-heart with Hannah, but useful.
She talked through the situation and said, ‘I’ll offer what support I can to promote the best outcome for everybody concerned.’
On Tuesday morning, Loren and Vikki returned to Honeybun.
Loren’s coat looked too big as they trudged up the drive. Vivvi was firing words at her, forehead corrugated by a frown.
Nico had learned from the last unannounced visit and, as the girls were watching Frozen II in the sitting room, he said to them, ‘I’m going to shut this door so if I make a noise in the kitchen it won’t spoil the movie.’
‘’K,’ Josie murmured, evidently on a level of entrancement way beyond removing her gaze from the screen on which Anna and snowman Olaf danced along a railway track while Anna sang about things never changing.
He closed the door before letting his visitors in. ‘I was going to call you,’ he said. ‘I’ve given it a lot of thought and I agree that something has to change.’
A wide smile of satisfaction slid over Vivvi’s face but Loren’s expression barely altered. She looked dull and ill and her hair was stringy. ‘What’s that mean?’ she asked.
He gazed at the woman he used to love, the woman he shared a child with. ‘A few days ago somebody told me something that affected me on a fundamental level. I had no inkling at the time, but it’s the key to the future.’ He took her hand. ‘When you’re in a plane crash you have to get your own oxygen flowing before you can help others.’
Chapter Twenty-Five
Hannah put her phone on Do Not Disturb, ignored the little red circles that denoted calls and messages racking up, switched off notifications and refused to let herself turn tail for cosy old Middledip.
Instead, all Sunday she drove slowly, numbly, south through England until it was dark and she found herself near the coast of Kent, spent and needing to stop. Wanting people nearby, not to mention loos and showers, she accessed the internet and found a site a few miles away open over Christmas. They kindly squeezed in her small camper by moving flower tubs aside. As it wasn’t a designated pitch there was no electrical hook-up and Hannah, Jeremy’s warnings ringing in her ears, was frightened of flattening the battery. It wasn’t the one that fired the engine but she was terrified of being left without light. Wearily, she made up the bed and switched on the gas for the heating and the tiny hob.
Red, green and blue lights made the campground twinkle like a grotto and campers wore beaming smiles along with their gumboots and coats as they strode to the shower block but all Hannah saw was icy puddles between iron-hard wheel ruts and Jack Frost breathing on her windows. Morning in The Bus was like waking up inside an ice cube, nothing like gazing out on magical snowy Stockholm from the sanctuary of a warm hotel.
It might have been different if she’d shared the space with Nico. The cramped quarters could have been intimate and even the dread of having to hurry across the dark campground for