‘I’m not sure that I can.’
‘Why? Have you got something else planned?’
‘No, it’s just that… I-I don’t want to be taken out of myself. I don’t want to be taken out anywhere. I want to stay here.’
She felt like a little girl begging not to go to the drama classes her mother had booked her into ‘because it would be good for her confidence’ even though she didn’t know anyone.
‘It’s just for a few hours. It will be fun.’
Carrie went to the fridge and poured two glasses of water while Jules sank on to a kitchen chair before her legs collapsed beneath her.
‘I’m sorry, Carrie. I really don’t think I can. Not at the moment.’
Carrie placed the glasses on the table next to her and pulled out a chair. She took Jules’s hands between hers.
‘You, above and beyond anyone I’ve ever met, are the woman who can do anything she sets her mind to,’ she said softly.
Jules shook her head.
‘No,’ she whispered. ‘Not anymore. That was the old me, before…’
Carrie’s grip tightened.
‘I know that life can kick you in the stomach, Jules, and I know how hard it is to pick yourself up from that, but trustme with this… like I trusted you, when you sent me here to a place without Wi-Fi, a barely functioning phone signal and not knowing a soul within a hundred-mile radius.’
‘I’m just not ready to meet people and have to explain things.’
‘It’s a pottery course, not a confessional. You won’t have to explain anything.’
‘Can I at least think about it?’ she asked.
‘Of course you can. As long as you talk yourself into it and not out of it because I really don’t want to let Lance down. He might have been able to fill those two spaces with other people at the last minute.’
‘You’re putting pressure on me. That’s not fair.’
‘Life, my sweet,’ Carrie said, ‘is far from fair. You don’t get to our age without finding that out several times over.’
Jules woke early, made herself a cup of green tea and took it into the garden. She walked barefoot across the bejewelled grass towards the view of the sea. There was a haze in the distance, a sign that the day was going to be hot. She was just about to sit down on the strategically placed bench when she spotted an egg balancing between the slats. She picked it up, expecting it to be cold, but it was still warm.
‘Hi!’ a voice called. ‘Jules, you haven’t seen a hen in your garden, have you? Mainly white like all of the others, but with a particularly pretty lacy black hackle.’
‘Sorry to be ignorant, but what’s a hackle?’
‘It’s those markings around the neck. I think it looks a bit like one of those Flemish collars from the seventeenth century.’
Tasha was standing on tiptoes and looking up over the hedge towards her. Jules held up the egg.
‘No sign of a hen, but I’ve found this and it’s still warm.’
‘Evidence!’ Tasha said with a grin. ‘Was it on the bench? She hasn’t done that in forever. She’s a pretty intelligent bird except when it comes to where she lays her eggs. It could easily have rolled off.’
‘Shall I bring it around?’ Jules asked. ‘I can’t exactly throw it to you!’
‘No, keep it. We’ve got quite a few already. Dad lets the girls out really early at this time of year and they usually lay within the first hour.’
She held up a wicker basket carefully stacked with light brown and cream eggs.
‘Is that your job, collecting the eggs?’ Jules asked.
