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“I am being careful. This is what careful looks like in lethal weather. Have you seen the roads?” His hands gripped the wheel. “Don’t travel. That was the advice. And here we are, travelling down a road—at least I think it’s a road—in the middle of nowhere. If we slide off the road here, we won’t be found for weeks. Surely, your parents would rather you were alive and safe somewhere else than dead with them?”

Would they? Yes, yes, of course they would. How could she doubt that? But even as they were expressing their relief that she was okay there would be a tiny hint—just a suggestion—that perhaps she hadn’t tried hard enough. They’d make her feel that not showing up on time was a failure on her part. She should have anticipated a storm and taken a flight a few days earlier. She should have had a contingency plan. She was an adult but she could feel her heart starting to pound as it had when she was a child and knew she’d disappointed her parents.

“Has the satnav taken us the wrong way? Where are we?”

“Honestly? I have no idea,” Matt said. “All I see is snow. I’m too focused on staying on the road when I occasionally catch a glimpse of it to care much about which road it is.”

“I told you we should have ignored its instructions at the last junction. You shouldn’t rely on it. You should have followed your instincts.”

“I have zero visibility, Brooke. And my instincts tried to stop us all getting into the car at the airport if you remember, but you overrode them so you can’t blame me now if my instincts have given up offering assistance. They’re sulking. And what else do I rely on but the satnav? Anyway, it doesn’t matter where we are because I can’t see a damn thing.” He increased the wiper speed and squinted through swirling snowflakes into darkness.

“Kids,” she warned in a loud whisper. “Moderate your language.”

“That was me moderating my language. Would you like the unmoderated version?” He slowed down. “This is terrible, Brooke. Enough. We are going to have to stop somewhere.”

“Where? We’re in the middle of nowhere, and anyway, we can’t stop.” Panic gripped her. “We have to get home. You know what my parents are like.”

“Yes, I do, which is why we’re currently driving through what they’re predicting to be the worst storm since records began while everyone else with sense is tucked up safely in the warm at home.”

Alarm bells rang in her head. She’d never seen him like this. Matt was Mr. Cool. He was the voice of calm in every situation. Like the time she’d gone into premature labour and he’d broken speed records driving her to the hospital, all the time telling her everything was going to be fine, or the time Elsie had come off her bike and hit her head on the plant pot. While Brooke had been dialling the emergency services and trying not to freak out at the volume of blood, Matt had been making his daughter laugh by talking about how worried he was about the plant pot. And then there had been that horrible bullying incident at school, which Brooke didn’t even want to think about (she couldn’t understand how children could be so cruel and mean)—Matt had handled that, too, which was good because if Brooke had followed her own instincts and carried through her ideas for dealing with the perpetrators, she probably would have ended up incarcerated. Matt had shown the appropriate level of concern but he’d remained calm, and the school had taken him seriously.

She rarely saw him stressed, so to see him stressed now simply boosted her own anxiety levels. And also her guilt because this was, as he’d reminded her, all her fault. She could have pointed out what a horrible position she was in, constantly being pulled between her husband and her parents, but what was the point? It had been this way for ten years.

Matt’s parents were warm and supportive, offering whatever help was needed but never overstepping. Her own parents were a different matter.

Part of the problem lay in the fact that she was an only child, and that brought with it a particular sort of pressure. She and her parents had always been close and they had been the most important people in her life until Matt had arrived on the scene. And it was no good reminding herself that it wasn’t a competition and that her relationship with Matt was totally different, because in the end it had turned out to be exactly that. A competition. It felt as if she was constantly having to choose between Matt and her parents. The conversation where she’d told her parents that she was moving to England had been one of the hardest of her life.

It had been easy for Matt because he’d carried on living where he’d always lived. He saw his parents as often as he always had. Also, Matt had a brother and a sister so his parents’ attention was spread more thinly.

Hers had been heartbroken, even though they’d tried hard to hide it. Saying goodbye at the airport the first time, Brooke had almost drowned under the waves of her mother’s barely contained distress. The pressure of her love was like a weighted blanket, heavy and suffocating. She’d tried to disguise it, of course, but somehow that made it even harder for Brooke.

Even now, after ten years, the goodbyes were still hard, and the guilt crushing.

“They’ll love you for bringing me home.”

“We both know they’ll never love me. No one is good enough for their little girl, and particularly not a British guy who married their baby and then took her across the pond to live miles away in London.”

She wanted to argue with that, but how could she? Every time they spoke to her parents their first words were when are you moving back?

“Let’s not do this now.”

The car skidded slightly and Brooke bit back a whimper, her heart thundering against her chest, and every muscle in her body rigid with tension.

Please let us arrive safely. Please.

“Be careful.”

“I am being careful.” His hands were white on the wheel. “Don’t travel. That was the advice. And here we are, travelling down a road in the middle of nowhere.”

“Mummy?” Behind them, Elsie gave a sob, and Brooke swivelled to give her what she hoped was a reassuring smile. Occasionally, she wished Elsie weren’t so sensitive. Brooke worried about the future and how her daughter would cope navigating the complexities of friendships and all the other emotional challenges that hammered holes in the human heart.

“Everything’s fine, honey. Daddy’s a little tense, that’s all. We’re all tired. It’s been a long journey for everyone. And if you could remember to call me Mommy not Mummy when we’re at Granny’s, that would be good.” And it would spare her one of her mother’s martyrish looks and not so subtle comments about her grandchildren abandoning their roots.

“Why do I have to say Mommy? Everyone in school says Mummy.”

“They live in England,” Matt said. “They’re allowed to say Mummy.”

“But we live in England,” Elsie said. “We live at 42 Foxglove Crescent, Highgate, London, N6—”