The Little Clock House on the Green. Eve Devon

wrong with naming your car. Just, maybe, not out loud! And maybe not Marilyn if you ever wanted to get girls into it.

      ‘Don’t you worry, Mr…?’

      Daniel hesitated and hated himself for doing so. He’d worked hard for years to be able to give his surname without worrying. Telling himself he wasn’t going to let Hugo take that from him as well, he cleared his throat and held out his hand, ‘Westlake. Daniel Westlake.’

      ‘Well, don’t you worry, Mr Westlake,’ Ted said shaking his hand. ‘I’ll take care of your Marilyn Monroe. I’ll even warm my hands up first,’ he added with a wink.

      Daniel smiled. He got out his phone to ring the woman who owned the B&B and ten minutes later he had a room booked and a promise from Ted he’d phone as soon as he knew what was wrong with the car.

      Following the lane back down to the village, Daniel stopped, his gaze taking in the lush green grass surrounded by a foot-high chain link fence, with a building at one end and the stone cottages at the other. To the left was what looked like woods and to the right a small parade of shops.

      So this was Whispers Wood.

      It looked nice.

      Pleasant.

      Soothing.

      A good enough place to hole up and think about where the hell he went from here.

       Chapter 5

       Back – From Outer Space

       Kate

      Kate winced as her Aunt Cheryl skewered her scalp with what was surely bobby-pin number one hundred and one. After the first couple of eye-widening stares into the mirror, Kate had decided it was probably best to avoid the reflective surface and simply allow Aunt Cheryl’s ‘Prom Look No. 3’ to develop into all it was meant to be.

      How she’d ended up as the practice hair model for Wood View High’s prom, she wasn’t quite sure. Although having said that, she had just sat down with a cuppa, and her mum’s sister was famous for turning dead time into ‘doings’ time.

      ‘So how long are you back for?’ Aunt Cheryl asked, sectioning off the front of Kate’s hair and proceeding to back-comb it to within an inch of its life.

      Back.

      Home.

      Ignoring the fact that they were both four-letter words, Kate concentrated on answering truthfully. Confidently. Brook-no-argument-ly. ‘I was thinking… permanently?’ She winced as she heard herself. Okay, so she still had a little work to do on sounding convinced.

      You could hear a pin drop.

      Literally, because the one in Aunt Cheryl’s mouth fell out as her jaw dropped open and it made a tiny ping as it hit the floorboards Juliet had painted white in an effort to make the room appear bigger.

      As her aunt bent down to retrieve the pin, Kate’s panicked eyes sought out Juliet’s in the mirror and she was grateful for the double thumbs-up of encouragement, before her cousin tactfully went back to the crafting magazine she’d been leafing through.

      ‘Back permanently?’ Aunt Cheryl asked, reclaiming the pin and shoving it back into her mouth along with a few others. ‘As in you’ve come home, home?’

      ‘Mmmn,’ Kate fixed her smile into place. The one she’d practised all the way over on the plane. Back two days and already she was discovering that, apparently, Kate Somersby coming back to Whispers Wood permanently had been one of those beyond-the-realms-of-possibility things.

      ‘And have you let your mum know?’ Aunt Cheryl wanted to know.

      Kate shifted uncomfortably on the chair she was perched upon and avoiding the question, put a hand up to her hair. ‘I thought this year prom hair was sort of romantic half-up, half-down affairs?’

      ‘And, see,’ Aunt Cheryl nudged Kate’s shoulder until she was looking in the mirror again, ‘isn’t that what I’m doing?’

      Kate stared at the half-up, half-down beehive that had some sort of fishtail plait going on at the back. Apparently, Look No.3 was a party-in-the-front and party-in-the-back affair.

      It wouldn’t be fair to describe Aunt Cheryl as a novice when it came to hair. She was a perfectly acceptable and qualified mobile hairdresser, who for the last twenty-five years had been dispensing opinions she’d gained from her first-class honours degree in sear-you-to-your-bones honesty along with a good set and blow-dry. If you were a certain age, you really had no complaints. If you were from this millennia, though, you knew to ask Juliet to do your hair.

      Juliet was amazing with hair and, privately, Kate always wondered if it was loyalty to her mum or shyness that stopped Juliet from striking out on her own.

      ‘So have you, then? Seen your mother, that is,’ Aunt Cheryl repeated.

      Kate began singing Abba’s ‘S.O.S.’ under her breath as once again her gaze sought her cousin’s in the mirror.

      Fortunately Juliet spoke ‘awkward’ and with a gentle smile, stood up and crossed the room to pass her mother the hairspray. ‘Give it a rest, Mum. She’s only been back a couple of days.’

      ‘Well, she can’t hide out with you forever, can she? Where’s she sleeping? You can’t even swing a cat in here, although God knows, you’ve got enough of them.’

      ‘It won’t be for forever. Although,’ Juliet turned and put a reassuring hand on Kate’s shoulder, ‘You know the sofa’s yours for as long as you want it. I love having you here.’

      ‘Thanks, lovely,’ Kate said.

      ‘Because, honestly,’ Aunt Cheryl demanded as if neither had spoken, ‘What’s Sheila going to say if she bumps into you?’

      That was actually a tough one.

      Kate had been worrying more about if her mum was going to react, rather than how.

      ‘Is she going to bump into me, though? I mean, does she actually leave the house now, then? Other than to pop out for something one of her beloved guest’s might need, I mean?’

      ‘Kate,’ her aunt reproved.

      ‘Sorry. Sorry. Habit.’

      ‘A bad habit.’

      ‘Yes,’ Kate whispered. ‘Bad habit.’

      Kate wanted to add that it was a habit she hadn’t wanted to learn, but now that she had it was one she seemed incapable of unlearning. But if she was back to stay she was going to have to. Being back meant seeing Sheila Somersby. Talking to Sheila Somersby. Trying to have a relationship with Sheila Somersby.

      At least she was pretty sure it did. In the quagmire of grief after Bea dying, Kate had begun to refer to her mum as The Shell because when Bea died she’d, rather unhelpfully, in Kate’s humble opinion, taken their mum with her, leaving behind only a hulled-out shell of skin and bone. Any energy her mum was able to drum up was spent on keeping her B&B guests comfortable.

      In the moments Kate could apply perspective, she got that – she really did. Her mum had a business she needed to keep going. A business she’d started after Kate and Bea’s dad had upped and left. A business that had enabled Sheila Somersby to block out the humiliation of his leaving and operate under a super-polished veneer of stoicism.

      Back then, Kate and Bea had had each other to soften the fallout and share their concerns their mum would never rekindle the sharp wit and curiosity for life that she’d used to share with her sister, Cheryl.

      But after Bea had died…

      Well,