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“I know.” She corrected herself swiftly. “Obviously, I know, although I can never remember dates. We’re all so busy with our lives—you know how it is—”

His expression suggested he didn’t know how it was, and that didn’t surprise her. It would be hard to imagine a sorrier excuse for a family than hers.

“How do you feel about it?” She shifted the focus away from herself. “This isn’t what you’d planned, either.”

“It’s not what any of us planned.”

That was true. She thought about how stressed Brooke had looked, and how hard she was working to keep showing a happy face. Izzy recognised the effort because she did the same thing herself. I’m fine, honestly—totally fine. And she thought about Mabel. They were lucky that Mabel had been willing to open her door to strangers. But there was a big difference between inviting someone in to take temporary shelter from the storm and hosting them for Christmas. It would be daunting, to say the least.

She decided that this would be a neat way to shift the subject to less personal ground.

“I’m not sure how pleased Mabel was to have uninvited guests.”

“She appears to live alone and she just had a ton of strangers landing at her front door, so I guess that’s bound to be unsettling. And then there’s the fact that we may have destroyed some of her property.”

“That’s all true.”

“But?” He tucked his camera bag out of the way so that they wouldn’t trip over it. “You saw something else?”

“I don’t know. It’s probably nothing, but did you see the look on her face when she opened the door to this room?”

“You mean when Elsie compared it to a witch’s house?”

“No, not that.”

She cast her mind back. What exactly had she seen?

Brooke and Matt had been fully occupied trying to stop the girls pressing fingers and faces to the windows.

Mabel had stood on the threshold while they’d all crowded inside what must be the crown jewel of her property.

Izzy shook her head. “Ignore me. I’m probably imagining it. I don’t know anything.”

“You do.” He sat down on the window seat. The snowflakes that had coated his head and shoulders as they’d ploughed their way from the car had long since melted and dried but had left his dark hair tousled. “You’re the most intuitive person I’ve ever met. Take our recent client as an example—I saw a slightly creepy entitled rich man living in a ridiculously large house.”

“I saw those things, too.”

Had that really been just hours ago? She could barely remember it. Or maybe her brain wasn’t capable of focusing on anything but Jason when he was in the room.

“Yes, but you also saw what was beneath that. You saw loneliness. You saw vulnerability.”

Probably because she was intimately familiar with those two things. It surprised her that it wasn’t obvious. She was always afraid that no matter how hard she worked to disguise it, people would be able to sense it about her, and the thought of that horrified her. It would be like leaving the house in her slippers. She didn’t want people to see that side of her. It was too raw. She was careful to guard and protect herself because she’d learned that no one else would.

“I suppose I’ve always been in tune with people’s emotions. I watch carefully.” She’d had to. As a child, it was the only way she’d been able to navigate erratic adult behaviour. She’d become hypervigilant.

“It’s a gift. You’re not as quick to judge as most people, myself included.”

Most of the time it didn’t feel like a gift. She overthought everything. She walked into a room and thought, What if they don’t like me? She studied people’s reactions in minute detail.

If someone didn’t seem happy, she wondered whether it was her fault. Whether she’d done something or said something.

He shifted his position. “So what did you see with Mabel?”

She thought back to the moment Mabel had led them to this room and realised what had jarred for her. “She didn’t come into the room. Did you notice that? She stood on the threshold and she hesitated before allowing us in, as if she didn’t really want to share this room with us but knew she had to. I’d guess that there’s some memory here that doesn’t sit easily with her.”

She glanced around, looking for clues. What significance did this room have? What part had it played in Mabel’s life?

“She didn’t come in,” Jason said, “but there were lots of us. Perhaps she thought it was already a little crowded?”