fairy lights were twinkling away on the rowan tree in front of the house. It had been planted a couple of hundred years ago to keep the demons at bay, according to Freya’s brilliantly Scottish father. She pressed her nose even closer to the window then screamed. ‘Looney! It’s snowing!!!’
She glanced round and couldn’t see her. Where was she? Hawaii didn’t come equipped with medieval ruins and snow. Izzy did a little happy dance. This was well worth the hours of Jack blithering on about how wretched Scotland was going to be when Austria was, obvs, going to be the absolute best time. Never mind the fact that Jack and Poppy were the ones who had refused to go with their grandparents. They were both obviously hurt, and vetoing the trip was their only means of sticking it to their father, but even so … Poppy had really hurt Luna’s feelings when she’d refused to sit next to her. Izzy had been impressed Charlotte hadn’t lost her temper or left them at the services. Her mother would’ve gone ballistic if she’d behaved so rudely. Theodora Yeats did not take to ingratitude. It was one of her mother’s perennial life lessons: Be grateful for what you do have, child. Not waste precious time aching for what you don’t.
Which was how, a year ago, when she’d had absolutely nothing, she’d forced herself to look beyond all that she had lost and ended up back here in the UK. It was amazing what looking for the good in life revealed.
Packing up their few possessions and moving back to the UK was probably the scariest thing Izzy had ever done. And that was saying something, considering her history. She’d naively thought what she had dubbed the ‘Nr Cardiff’ cottage would provide her with the most comfort. Solid evidence that her mother and father had shared something beyond an impassioned one-night stand. Proof family was the foundation of everything, even if it did come in non-traditional packaging.
It wasn’t the house, in the end, that had provided the comfort. It was her friendships. She’d been terrified that spring day, showing up with a child she hadn’t told anyone but Emily about. Holding so many secrets close to her chest. Apart from a bit of a catch-up, it had been like no time had passed at all. Everyone was exactly as she had remembered them. Emily, still sharp as a whip and scratchily caustic. Freya, able to turn her hand to anything and make it more beautiful. Charlotte was still the cake-maker. The organizer. The fixer.
Which was ultimately why she had accepted Charlotte’s offer to move into her granny flat, even after the ‘deadly mould’ in the Nr Cardiff cottage had turned out to be not so deadly. The black splotches had appeared courtesy of a dodgy bathroom fan and the damp Welsh weather. Emily had helped her sort an electrician and some hardcore cleaners. Freya had sent her countless emoticon messages and hilarious GIFs whenever her spirits had sagged, and Charlotte had organized for Izzy’s flat to become a holiday let, administered by a well-established company that had already booked several couples in for a ‘magical Welsh getaway’.
‘Look Mummy! Towels!’
Luna ran back into their room from heaven-knew-where with a set of well-worn towels. She placed them on the bed then dived straight into tidily unpacking her things into a heavy wooden chest of drawers. Luna was the nester of the two of them.
The niggles came back more powerfully. She really should reach out to Looney’s father. If Charlotte sold the house, there was no guarantee they’d be invited to move to her next place. Izzy’s house style (slob) was the total opposite to Charlotte’s (immaculate). Charlotte had been lovely about helping them out in a crisis, but they were out of sight in the granny flat. If she had to downsize and the Welsh cottage had already been let, then Izzy might well have to find yet another place to live.
Oh, well. There was nothing she could do about it right now, and Charlotte had said she wouldn’t think about selling the house until the spring if at all, so …
Izzy did a slow twirl in the centre of the room, soaking in the antler lighting fixtures, the dozen or so individually framed pressed flowers, the hand-carved lampstands shaped like owls. ‘It’s like staying in a quirky art museum.’ She shivered. ‘A museum without any heat.’
Charlotte, who’d just walked through from her room, tugged her gilet a bit closer round her. It was a lovely shade of maroon that really made her green eyes ping out against her pale skin. Pale skin made paler by the cold? Or worry about Freya, in the wake of Monty having buggered off to his brother’s place. Or was it to his parents’? Somewhere near Bristol anyway.
‘I suppose it must cost quite a lot to heat the whole house with only Freya’s father and brother here on their own.’
‘Good point.’ Izzy nodded at the four-poster bed. ‘I thought Freya was the only arty-farty one, but you said her brother made this bed?’
Charlotte nodded, a slightly wistful expression softening her features. Was it for the bed, or Freya’s hunky brother who had helped them haul in their nine thousand bags?
Izzy ran her hand along the thick silver birch tree branch that made up one of the four posters of the huge, fairy-tale bed, then pounced on the squeaky mattress, beckoning for Luna and Charlotte to join her. ‘Did you see these cushions? I bet Freya made them. They have that Frey-Frey touch, don’t they?’
She made fancy hand gestures round the flannel and wool throw pillows, as if she were a model on the shopping channel. They really were spectacular. Ink and tartan cut-outs stitched onto all sorts of different fabrics, with the odd embroidered embellishment. Red deer. Otters. Highland cattle. All of them anthropomorphized to look as though they were at some sort of Highland Mad Hatter’s tea party. They were wonderful. The embellishments showed off Freya’s amazing skill at capturing the tiniest details. A miniature kingfisher dipping its beak into an exquisite cup of tea. A stag, with its head cocked, as if it were listening to the sounds that the wind beyond the window was carrying.
Luna, who hadn’t taken up the invitation to jump on the bed, was still exploring the room. Opening doors and drawers, oohing and aahing as she went. ‘Mum! Look! It’s a secret passageway!’ She held open a door that Izzy hadn’t spied, took a step in then hesitated. ‘Can you go first?’
‘Of course, Booboo!’ Izzy bounced over to the door. This sort of bravery she could do.
She dramatically tiptoed along the short corridor and tried to open the door at the end of it. ‘Nope. Locked. Maybe it’s one of those olden days passages where the rich people snuck into one another’s rooms without the servants knowing.’
Charlotte laughed, ‘Izzy, your imagination is about a thousand times more fertile than mine. I would’ve thought it was for the servants to carry wood to each of the rooms for the fires in the morning.’
‘Do they still have servants?’ Luna was wide-eyed with wonder.
‘Fraid not, Booboo.’ Izzy fluffed her daughter’s billow of ringleted hair. ‘There aren’t many folk who have a fleet of servants to light their fires these days.’ Or men to sneak round and have secret affairs with, for that matter. Although if this led to Rocco’s room and she switched with Charlotte …
Izzy jumped when someone knocked on the door then opened it. Freya’s father. ‘All right girls? I was just wondering if you fancied me lighting the fires in your rooms? Take the edge off.’
Izzy and Charlotte burst out laughing. Charlotte instantly fell over herself apologizing, saying, yes, absolutely, that would be wonderful, but would it be a waste seeing as they were all going to be down in the kitchen soon enough?
‘Fair enough, then.’ Lachlan Burns, who still had a full thick shock of white hair and bright, engaged blue eyes, started to walk away and then doubled back on himself. ‘I
