She opened the front door and shivered as a blast of freezing air entered the hallway.
Percy bounded ahead, sniffing the ground, his paws leaving prints in the snow.
Jenny followed him, feeling better for being outdoors. It had stopped snowing and the crisp clean air cleared her head. The solitude and the sense of space was calming.
She tilted her head back and breathed the icy winter air.
Usually this was one of the best places in the country forstargazing but tonight the sky was black, most of the stars obscured by clouds. Was there more snow coming?
She hoped the weather wouldn’t stop Becky and Will making it home tomorrow.
She was looking forward to seeing her—particularly now, when the emotional landscape around her felt so unstable. Becky was her steady one. There was never any drama with her. Especially no romantic drama, at least none that she talked about. No doubt she’d shrug off the news that Jamie and Hayley were married, and if she felt that Rosie was upset about something it would take her a matter of seconds to tease it out of her sister. And calm her down. Becky always calmed Rosie down. They had each other’s backs and always had. Knowing that Becky would soon be home lessened the worry about Rosie.
Jenny thought about her daughter sharing a car with Will. She smiled as she imagined Audrey, just a short distance away, spinning romantic scenarios.
If she’d learned one thing lately it was that your children’s romantic relationships rarely followed a predictable path.
It was fun to speculate, but over the years she’d forced herself to accept that Becky and Will didn’t have those sorts of feelings for each other. You could wish for it, and both she and Audrey had wished for it, but wishing for it didn’t make it real.
And it didn’t really matter. Friendship was important, too, and she liked knowing that Will and Becky were good friends. In the end that was probably more sustainable.
Right now all she cared about was that Becky’s life wasn’t complicated. She was already handling all the change she could cope with.
Chapter11
Rosie
Rosie pulled on her clothes and crept out of the bedroom without waking Declan. They’d slept side by side but had managed not to touch once in the night. Normally she liked to sleep wrapped around him, but for her the emotional distances made it impossible to connect physically. She was afraid to reach for him, and he didn’t reach for her.
Despite the very late night and the exhaustion of the journey, she hadn’t slept at all, which wasn’t so surprising because she could never sleep when she was upset.
She needed to talk to someone, preferably her mother. She could always talk to her mother about everything. But if she knew Rosie was worried then she’d worry, and Rosie didn’t want to give her extra stress at Christmas when she already had more than enough. More than usual, thanks to Jamie. After his shock announcement the night before, Rosie had no doubt her mother had spent most of the night awake worrying.
Maybe she could talk to her dad. He always had something wise and sensible to say, even if he did have a tendency to turn everything into a consultation and give her his “doctor” look. Also, he was always up early, which meant there was a reasonable chance they’d be able to talk before anyone else was awake.
She crept into the kitchen, expecting to smell coffee and see her father reading the news on his phone while doing his morning exercises.
The kitchen was empty. Usually her father was up and around at six and it was now eight o’clock. Maybe she’d missed him. Maybe he’d already gone for a walk.
She frowned and checked by the back door. His coat was on the peg, so he hadn’t gone for a walk. Presumably he was having a lie-in after their late night. Or maybe he’d been up all night soothing her mother’s anxiety.
A moment later Percy nosed his way into the room, tail wagging.
“Where’s Dad?” She bent to make a fuss of him. “Has no one taken you out this morning yet? We’ll go together.” Perhaps her father had gone out much earlier with the dog and had now gone back to bed.
Squashing down the disappointment that she wasn’t going to be able to talk to him by herself, she grabbed her coat, pushed her feet into her boots and headed outdoors.
The snow had stopped falling and the sky was bright blue, the sun dazzling. The landscape was frosted white and silver, the surface of the snow sparkling in the sunshine.
She pulled on her hat and her sunglasses, zipped up her coat and headed away from the house to the footpath that led to the beach. The path itself was buried under a layer of snow but she knew the route so well she could have walked it with her eyes closed.
The air was icy and she settled her scarf over her mouth and nose and stamped her feet to warm them.
Percy bounded ahead, occasionally pausing to thrust his nose into an interesting looking mound of snow.
She’d been walking for ten minutes when she heard someone call her name.
“Hey, Rosie!” The voice came from behind her, and she turned to see her brother approaching.
