Maddy could tell something was up. Ella never went anywhere without Max. Ever since they’d got together she clung to him like a limpet. As if, if she let go he might disappear into a puff of smoke and she’d be left sitting on a pumpkin with lots of mice running around her.

She looked immaculate as always. Her clothes worth more than Maddy earned in a year. Her expression was disparaging, haughty. Like there was no way she would trudge through the streets on her own to get to their mum’s.

Maddy swallowed.

Dimitri once said, ‘Why do you let her get to you?’

And Maddy had shrugged, looked away and said, ‘I don’t know.’ But she did know. Because on the one hand Ella terrified her and on the other hand Maddy so desperately wanted to be her, or at the very least be liked by her again.

‘Come on, I’ll take you.’ Maddy said in the end, conscious of her dust coated hair and make-up free face.

Ella took a couple of steps forward, tottering awkwardly over the pot holes in her killer heels. ‘What is wrong with the bloody roads?’ she huffed.

‘The road is paved up here, it’s not usually like this,’ Maddy said, defensive of her island. ‘It happened in the storm.’

Ella made a face as if it’d happened just to spite her.

‘People lost their houses.’ Maddy narrowed her eyes.

Ella looked away.

They trudged on another couple of steps, Ella taking tiny steps in her leather boots and dragging a Louis Vuitton case behind her.

‘Do you want me to take that?’ Maddy said as they got to the top of the sloping cobbled path that led down to the beach, the jetty and the taverna.

‘No I can manage.’ Ella said, the sharpness of her tone making Maddy flinch.

CHAPTER 7

ELLA

There is no way I’m letting her make everyone think I can’t even carry my own bag.

Ella bit the inside of her cheek. Her shoes were rubbing, her shirt was sticking to her back, her bag was getting increasingly heavy as she tried to stop it running away with itself on the sloping road.

Maddy loped ahead of her, all sun-kissed beach-babe, scuffing her trainers on the cobbles almost trying to show Ella how casual and laidback her life was.

I gave all this up because of you. The thought popped into her head as suddenly as the view of the taverna appeared before her, and, as she pushed it away, she found herself caught. Staring, involuntarily, at the sprawling building. She hadn’t looked at it in years. Really taken it in. Seen the terrace that led out into the sea like it was floating on the water and the lattice of vines that stretched up along one wall and over the roof. Gone were the rattan mats that had been nailed onto the awning as a makeshift defence against the rain and used to bash and shake in the wind, terrifying them in their beds at night. In their place was a sparkling new roof, beautiful terracotta tiles that curved like waves and thick new wooden beams that her mum had strung with coloured lights that swayed gently in the breeze. The stone walls had been whitewashed since she’d last been there and The Little Greek Kitchen had been slapped on the side in yellow paint.

Maddy had come up with the name and Ella remembered being so jealous. Her suggestions had seemed so lame in comparison.

‘Are you coming?’ Maddy had paused ahead of her to look back.

‘Yes, I was just readjusting my bag.’ Ella said, making sure she hadn’t seen her gawping at the view and focused on hauling her case down the set of steep steps that joined them to the road leading to the taverna.

It was the smell that knocked Ella for six. Warm pastry cracking and bursting in the oven and cheese melting into a soft, spongy goo. Summers spent sitting on the veranda of a villa they rented stuffing little filo pies into her mouth and jumping into the pool while her dad barbecued and her mum sat in the shade rubbing sun cream into Maddy’s tiny arms, wearing an old white linen shirt and no make-up, and looking stunning. It was on this island that Ella had dipped Maddy’s toes into the sea when she was a baby, it was where she’d reluctantly agreed to go on the donut rides that she hated so that Maddy would have someone with her, where she’d taught Maddy to play the card game Slam! and let her beat her just to be nice, and where, on the plane on the way home, she had held Maddy’s hand and listed all the good things they were going home to when she cried about the holiday being over.

As Maddy and her mum stood side by side now, Maddy having gone over and tapped Sophie on the shoulder, Ella could see that their likeness had only got stronger as they got older. That even in looks now, she was the odd one out.

‘What is it?’ Sophie frowned, rubbing her hands clean on a tea-towel. ‘Why aren’t you at work?’

Maddy nodded towards the doorway.

Ella was standing between her granddad who was snoozing in an old armchair and a big bunch of conifer leaves that had been thrust into a pot of oasis and decorated like a Christmas tree, white lights sparkling, tiny rainbow coloured baubles winking as they bobbed in the breeze, and on the top branch the big gold star from their youth bound on with wire.

There was always a joke that Ella got all the worst bits of both of her parents. Her dad’s pale skin that burnt with anything less than factor fifty. Her mum’s unruly hair. Her dad’s thick eyebrows. Her mum’s ankles. Her dad’s constant battle with his weight that had him in the gym every morning. Her mum’s belief that love always won out in the end. Was she still waiting? Ella wondered as she glanced at the star glinting on the top of the tree, remembered her dad bringing it home in a tatty brown paper bag, pulling it out like a magician pulling flowers out of a hat. They hadn’t had much spare money for decorations but he’d said with absolute authority that you couldn’t have a tree without a star and picked it up from the market stall outside his office.

‘Ella.’ Sophie said, hair all wild and scrunched up in a knot on top of her head, wearing a pale purple sweatshirt pushed up at the sleeves, and a pair of stone-washed jeans that had gone full circle since the eighties and looked fashionable again. ‘Lovely to see you.’ She smiled, as if Ella walked in every day.

Standing in the doorway Ella had never felt more like an outsider, watching the look that passed between her mum and sister when Maddy said, ‘She’s brought a case with her.’ As if Ella wasn’t there at all.

‘Are you staying with us?’ her mum asked, looking past Ella at the dusty suitcase.

Ella was too distracted thinking that she wished for a moment that her mum could look at her and know what she was thinking. Know the crazy emotions whizzing round her head about Max without her having to say anything. Maddy and her mum seemed to communicate via telepathy. Always had.

‘If it’s not too much trouble.’

‘It would be no trouble at all but we’re fully booked at the moment, honey.’ Her mum made a face of apology.

Ella couldn’t work out quite how she felt at the term of endearment.

‘If you’d rung I could have saved you something but with this weather…’ Her mum pointed out the window towards the slowly sinking sun, ‘… you are more than welcome to share the upstairs room with Maddy.’

‘What?’ Maddy, who had been leaning against the larder door chewing on a stick of celery, suddenly stood up straight, incensed.

‘It’s a big room, Mads.’ her mum said, and Ella thought she saw her raise her eyebrows at Maddy as if telling her to suck it up.

Ella nodded. ‘Oh don’t worry, I can try and find a room elsewhere.’

‘There’s nothing, Ella.’ Her mum shook her head. ‘Of the apartments that haven’t closed for the season, there’s nothing left. People are even letting out their own bedrooms to cash in at the moment. Honestly, the room upstairs is lovely and quite big enough for the two of you.’

Maddy skulked away and stood in the doorway with her back to them.

A yellow-eyed white cat jumped down from the sea wall and sauntered over to weave its way through Maddy’s legs.

Her mum cocked her head to one side. ‘The only other place I can think of where there might be something is one of the hotels on the other side of the island but really, you’re quite welcome to stay.’

Before Ella could come up with a reasonable excuse and start calling round the hotel chains, there was a sudden hacking cough from next to her and a snorting sound that seemed to signal her grandfather waking up. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said, ‘I forgot where I was for a second.’ Then rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he sat up further in his chair, reached for his glasses on the table next to him and said, ‘Well if it isn’t Eleanor, goodness me, look at you. All dressed up for this old place.’ he said, laughing the same croaky, husky laugh that Maddy had inherited. ‘You here, Maddy in London. I don’t know. Can’t keep up with any of you.’

Ella watched Maddy’s head shoot up with a look of horror.

‘I didn’t know you were going to London, Maddy.’ Ella said, wondering whether she would have told her she was in town. Her next thought was that she didn’t want Maddy in London. London was hers, she thought. Then right deeper down, a tiny bit of her said that it wanted to make sure that she wasn’t going on her own, Maddy would be completely out of her depth. In the last however many years she’d only been off the island to go to Athens, as far as Ella knew. She ignored that voice.

‘She’s not going.’ Sophie said, emphatically, walking back to the counter, pausing to stroke Maddy’s hair absentmindedly as she went past.

Ella frowned as she watched Maddy glance to one side, her jaw seemingly locked rigid in place.

Instinctively Ella reached up and touched her ponytail, greasy now from travelling, and wondered when the last time her mum had stroked her hair was.

Her phone beeped.

She pulled her hand away from her ponytail and was reading the text in an instant.

Max.

Please don’t stay away too long.

It was like a scene in ER. The phone defibrillating her heart back to life. Her blood was suddenly pumping through her veins again. Like she’d reached the surface and could breathe.

‘I’ve just got to reply to this, sorry, it’s work.’ she said, stepping outside for a second and turning her back so they wouldn’t see the beaming smile on her face.

I need a couple of days at least to think. Ella wrote. She didn’t want to give in too easily.

Understood. I’ll be at the club, flat too lonely without you. Tree v sad you’re gone.

She smiled as she put the phone back in her bag. She’d let him stew for a bit, just give him time to put a stop to anything that might have been going on with Amanda, then go back for a Christmas full of apologies, make-up gifts, make-up sex. They could have that dinner at Claridge’s, go and buy oysters for Christmas Eve at Borough Market, stroll hand in hand down the Southbank, his arm tight around her shoulders, and then snuggle up in a black cab home. They’d be back on track. Back in their perfect life. He had chosen Ella. And for that she could turn a blind eye to a small hiccup, as he’d said, it was almost as if she’d expected it from him. Now though, she’d go back and be better. She’d never mention it again. In the cold light of her mum and Maddy’s life in Greece, suddenly home with Max seemed like the only place she belonged, and she couldn’t wait to get back.

Looking up and into the dimly lit kitchen, she remembered what she’d been thinking just a second before and thought, what the hell? What was she doing fantasising about her mum touching her hair. Pull yourself together Ella. This isn’t you.

She strutted back into the dark coolness of the room and said, ‘I will stay, thanks, I’m only here for a couple of days Maddy so it shouldn’t put you out too much.’ She was the grown-up, she was the guest, she was the mature one, and she was blowed if poor little Maddy wanting her room all to herself was the reason she wasn’t going to stay.

‘Lovely.’ Her mum smiled, glancing up from where she was dipping little baby squids in batter. ‘Do you want a glass of something?’ she asked, ‘Red wine? Beer? Retsina?’

For a moment Ella thought how lovely it would be to just be able to sit down, pour a glass of chilled white wine into a little glass, pick at a plate of plump purple olives and silver anchovies and gossip and laugh and giggle like she remembered her parents and their friends doing. When she would watch from the door and then her mum would catch her and she would be called into the room and she’d think she was in trouble but actually they’d offer her something to eat and she’d perch on a chair in her nightie and they’d ask her questions and tell her jokes before her mum would take her hand, soft and warm, and put her back to bed.

But instead she said, ‘Do you think I could just go up to the room? I’d really like to get changed, you know I’m here straight from work.’ She could feel her grandfather watching her. Could sense Maddy hanging around by the back door listening. Could see the look of disappointment flash across her mum’s face before she nodded and said cooly, ‘Of course you can. Maddy, sweetheart, can you show Ella upstairs?’

CHAPTER 8

MADDY

Maddy hated seeing her mum upset. Dimitri would always be like, ‘She’s fine, look at her, she’s smiling…’ but Maddy could tell by the tilt of her head or the way she would swallow and look away. Maddy’s emotions were written all over her face but her mum and Ella, they had a way of just hinting at what was brewing underneath and it drove her crazy. Mainly because they were usually the cause of each other’s upset.

‘You could have had a drink.’ Maddy said as she sat down on the wooden chair next to the dressing table in the upstairs room.

‘I wasn’t thirsty.’ Ella replied without turning round. She’d put her suitcase on the small single bed in the corner that Maddy used as a sofa. ‘I take it this is where I’ll be sleeping?’ She unzipped her case and glanced back at Maddy then looked pointedly at the big double bed in the centre of the room, white gauze curtains hanging either side like a canopy, the material rippling in the breeze from the open French windows that looked out over the sea.

Maddy bit the inside of her cheek and then said, ‘Ella, if it would make you feel better, you can have my bed.’

‘No no, I wouldn’t dream of it.’ Ella turned her back again and Maddy watched as she pulled out piece after piece of the most beautiful clothes. Kaftans that sparkled in the evening light, bikinis that looked dry clean only, a wide-legged silk pantsuit that draped like pouring water. She tried not to be jealous but she couldn’t help it, envy seemed to constrict her throat, making her have to swallow before she could say, ‘Take my bed.’

‘Really there’s no need.’

‘Honestly, take it.’

‘Ok.’ Ella picked up her suitcase, still open, and transferred it over to the double. ‘So…’ she said as she carried on unpacking and arranging, ‘Tell me about London.’

Maddy didn’t want to tell her. Didn’t want to say it out loud because to Ella it would seem so nothing. A couple of nights singing in a bar. She would look at her as if she was crazy. Little Maddy in the big city attempting to follow a dream. She’d probably tell her not to get caught up in a prostitution ring or agree to any topless modelling. The idea actually made her smile a little – she remembered when the two of them sent off for a modelling competition in Just Seventeen magazine. Taking each other’s pictures and pouting for the camera. Where had they been when they’d taken them? She narrowed her eyes as she tried to picture the photographs. There was a Take That poster on cream wallpaper with gold stars. There were advent calendars that said Joyeux Noel at the top in swirly writing. Her dad’s flat. Her dad’s flat in Battersea. Dinner with Veronica. Maddy had refused to eat anything.

When she looked up Ella was watching her, a collection of toiletries cradled in her arms. ‘Oh it’s nothing.’ Maddy said, shrugging the question off. ‘I was going to go but I’ve had some cash flow difficulties.’

After that neither of them said anything for a while. A hundred different things floated in and out of Maddy’s head to say. She wanted to ask how their dad was, whether he was still with Veronica. She wanted to ask why Ella had appeared out the blue without Max, she wanted to know what she’d eaten at Claridge’s, if she’d even gone. Most of all though, looking at all of Ella’s beautiful stuff, she wanted to say, will you lend me the money to go to London. But instead she said, ‘I’ll get you some clean sheets.’

Dinner was as awkward as Maddy had thought it would be. Her mum had laid the big table in the kitchen – covered it in candles and white china and sprigs of olive in vases. In the centre of the table was a big, bubbling moussaka and a ceramic bowl of Greek salad, the olives from the grove on the hillside, the feta from Dimitri’s goats.

Ella had changed into a long sleeved blue and white striped top, loafers and skinny white jeans with a thin red belt. Maddy thought she looked like she’d just stepped out of the pages of a J Crew catalogue.

‘So how’s work, Eleanor?’ her grandmother asked after they’d all be served and Ella had asked for a much smaller portion so hers had been passed round to her grandfather.

‘Great, the company’s not doing quite as well as it could but if we can land this new account we’ll be sorted for the fiscal year. It’s a mobile phone company.’

Her grandmother made a face as if to show she thought that all sounded very clever and important.

‘I’ll work on it while I’m out here.’ Ella added as her phone rang, almost on cue, and she nipped outside to answer it.

‘Bloody phones,’ her grandfather muttered.

‘You all right, Mum?’ Maddy asked when Ella was out the room. She’d noticed she was just pushing the moussaka around her plate and seemed restless, on high alert trying to do everything to please Ella. The kitchen, Maddy noticed, was spotless. Not that it was usually dirty, but it was gleaming. And on the side board her mum had put out the nativity set they’d had as kids and a tacky plastic angel with fibre optic wings that Maddy hadn’t seen for years twinkled in the low lighting. They always did a kind of haphazard Christmas. Her mum would throw a big party at the taverna on Christmas Eve and do a mix of Greek and English food and all the locals would come, but on Christmas Day it was just their family and they’d have lobsters and fresh fish, and her mum would decorate the place with lights and glass bowls of pomegranates, she’d scatter olive branches and hellebore flowers along the mantle piece and string mussel shells that she’d gilded with gold leaf along the windows and glass hearts, almost too delicate to touch, in front of the mirror.

The nativity set though, Maddy didn’t even know her mum had kept that. It was only seeing it now that she realised how much their Christmas trimmings had changed. Or perhaps, she thought, watching her mum watch Ella as she talked quietly into her phone outside, her mum had consciously created new traditions.

‘Fine, honey.’ her mum said, ‘It’s nice isn’t it? To have all the family around.’ Maddy watched her take a breath in through her nose and almost reset herself before reaching forward and tucking Maddy’s hair behind her ear.

CHAPTER 9

ELLA

What was with all the hair touching?

Ella was in a foul mood when she walked back into the kitchen.

The phone call had been from Amanda’s husband. He’d wanted to know how she was going to proceed. He was filing for divorce.

‘You know they’re together now?’ he’d said, his cut-glass accent splitting through her, and she’d hung up.

Inside she noticed the nativity set for the first time and it made her feel even worse. The idea of Maddy and her mum laying it out every Christmas together, the little sheep with one broken leg and the horse that she’d etched her name in the bottom with a safety pin and the Jesus that Maddy had drawn a moustache on with felt tip pen and that she’d tried to wash off with Mr Muscle before her mum saw it. She wanted to box it all up and carry it upstairs and stuff it in her suitcase.

As she sat down she felt all eyes on her. Her mum watching expectantly. ‘Everything all right, Ella? Can I get you anything? I can heat up the moussaka if it’s gone cold, if you want?’ she asked, and her polite willingness to please her made Ella even more annoyed and defensive. She didn’t want to be the guest.

But why would she expect any different? It had always been like that. Ella being picked up from the airport, sitting in the back while Maddy tuned the radio to songs her and her mum knew the words to and Ella had never heard. Never knowing where anything was kept in the cupboards, unsure who the locals were, no idea what was happening in the programmes they watched on TV. She always felt like the guest.

‘So Maddy, what was the cash flow problem?’ Ella asked as she shook her head at her mum’s offer to reheat the pasta and played with a slice of aubergine with her fork.

‘She smashed a boat onto some rocks in the storm earlier in the week. Blew her life savings.’ her granddad said without looking up from where he was hoovering up his moussaka. ‘Fabulous food, Sophie, as always, just fabulous.’

‘It’s for the best,’ her mum cut in as she leant over and picked up the salad bowl, passing it round the table. ‘London wouldn’t suit Maddy at all.’

‘I am here.’ Maddy said, arms outstretched. ‘I am at the table you know? And I think I could handle it. I’m not nine any more.’

Her grandmother looked up warily at her mother, gave her the kind of look that suggested that Maddy was right and her mum was wrong. Ella watched the dynamics round the table like she did a boardroom meeting, sussing out allegiances. Her grandfather just gave a snort and went back to his food, pouring himself more wine and offering top ups which were declined by everyone but Ella.

She sat back, arms crossed in front of her, wine glass dangling from between her fingers and surveyed the frown on Maddy’s face. Noticed how the lines in her forehead were just starting to stay even when she relaxed and her cheeks were more chiseled, less babyish. It almost surprised Ella that Maddy wasn’t nine any more.

Glancing to her right she noted just how much her grandmother looked like her dad. She wondered if they’d told her mum that they’d had dinner with him and Veronica last time they were in England. Her mum looked tired. Her tan faded. Her food, though, from the small forkfuls Ella had tasted, was just as beautiful as always. Her mum was glancing over at Maddy as if trying to tie her where she was with just a look. But Maddy looked like a bird, too big for its nest.

The feeling that her mum had never looked at her like that was as unexpectedly sharp as Amanda’s husband’s comments on the phone. And it made her say, ‘I’ll lend you the money’, without really even thinking about it. Then she added as casual a shrug as she could manage.

Her mum’s head whipped round. Maddy’s eyes flicked up. Her grandmother’s eyes closed for a second too long. Her grandfather kept eating.

‘You won’t.’ her mum said, quickly.

‘Oh my god that would be amazing.’ Maddy visibly jumped from her seat but then sat down again because her and Ella didn’t ever hug or exchange physical contact in any way.

‘Why can’t she go, Sophie?’ her granddad asked through a mouthful of salad.

Pushing her hair back behind her ear and then leaning forward to serve herself some salad, seemingly buying herself some time, her mum said, ‘London would swallow her up.’

Maddy huffed out a breath as though that was preposterous.

Her grandmother leant forward, elbows on the table, and rested her chin in her hands. ‘You can’t keep her here forever, Soph.’

‘Again people, I am here.’ Maddy rolled her eyes. ‘And again, I’m not nine any more.’

‘You don’t have anywhere to stay,’ her mum said.

Ella took a sip of her wine, watched Maddy flounder as she considered her lack of lodgings. Saw her grandmother raise a brow but go back to her food, as if she’d already got more involved than she might usually. Then Ella dabbed a spot of wine from her mouth with her finger and said, ‘She can stay at my flat. Max isn’t there.’

‘Really?’ Maddy had to roll her lips together to contain her smile.

Ella shrugged as if it was nothing. She wanted to think of herself as a selfless, successful big sister who could come in and save the day. Not someone who just wanted to get her younger sister out the way so that just for once, she could have her mum all to herself and see what happened.

The fact that her mum was shooting her a fierce look at that moment would have to be ignored for now.

As Maddy was topping up her wine and toasting with her granddad – who then reached over and touched the top of Ella’s glass with his, saying, ‘Good on you,’ – another male voice cut across the room.

‘What are we celebrating?’

Ella turned in her seat to see who it was and saw a guy lounging against the doorway in cargo shorts and a light blue shirt, his sleeves rolled up seemingly to purposely reveal a tattoo of a compass that traced halfway up his right forearm. Hair shaggy, dark and wet, either recently washed or he’d just come out of the sea. Stubble not quite obscuring a razor sharp jaw. Nose like a horse’s. Long and aquiline with a small hook, a nose like that and you had to either stand proud and tall or wither and die. Eyes too dark to see from this distance but clearly looking her way.

No way could it be, she decided.

If it was, then this could be really embarrassing.

I hope it’s not him, Ella thought.

An image of herself at fifteen. Puppy dog eyes and a plump little waist.

Cocky, bad-tempered Dimitri who would click his fingers sullenly for the ropes of their boats and Maddy would ask him if he wanted her lemonade, giggling, while Ella crossed her arms over her waist where she was sitting in her bikini and try and look at him from under her eyelashes like she’d seen Princess Diana do in her interview. He would sneer at them and stalk away, hanging around watching with his gang of friends, whispering and laughing as they scurried past.

As he sauntered into the kitchen, all louche and relaxed, she realised young, moody Dimitri with his condescending looks and smug smiles was neither young and skinny any more nor had he stayed in Athens where she had hoped he was happily settled – never to be seen again. She pursed her lips and put her shoulders back as he came closer, dark and handsome and butterscotch tanned.

‘Dimitri, you remember Ella don’t you?’ Maddy said. She had the wine glass up to her lips so Ella couldn’t see if she was smiling.

Dimitri sat himself down in the seat her mum had just vacated like he owned the place, flipped it round backwards and leant against the frame. Then he cocked his head to one side and seemed to study her.

Green.

His eyes were the colour of freshly cut grass.

‘Eleanor?’ he nodded. ‘Goodness me. Haven’t you changed?’

Ella found her mouth would only stretch into the slightest of smiles and thanked God it was dark in there because her cheeks had unexpectedly turned luminous red. ‘I think I remember you…’ she said vaguely and as soon as she did she saw his lips quirk up and she knew immediately that he knew she was lying.

‘Of course, why would I think you would remember. Stupid me. Dimitri.’ He held out a hand, green eyes dancing like imps.

‘Yes of course.’ Ella took a sip of water because her throat was suddenly really dry, and then reached forward to shake his hand.

His skin was rough and dry, and his hold on her was completely different to being touched by Max. While her hand was in his it was like she couldn’t speak. Like her brain had been momentarily switched off and she was paralysed, like one of those spiders who injects their mate with poison, except nicer than that. And more stressful at the same time.

‘Are you hot, Ella?’ her granddad asked.

‘No not at all.’ she said, pulling her hand back and sitting on it. ‘It’s…’ she rubbed her cheek with her other hand and felt the warmth radiating from it, but couldn’t think of any reasonable excuse.

If there was one thing she didn’t need to be reminded of, it was her fifteen year old self.

Dimitri leant forward, seemingly completely unabashed by the whole previous thirty seconds, and scooped up some moussaka with a spare fork. ‘So…’ he said with his mouth full. ‘What are you celebrating?’

‘I’m going to London.’

‘Ahh.’ He nodded. ‘I should have guessed. I suppose you have something to do with this?’ He turned again to look at Ella and she found herself having to look away.

‘I erm–’ she stumbled.

‘Ella is paying for Maddy to go.’ Sophie said, coming over to the table with bowls full of creamy, white yoghurt and dried figs like squashed bruises and setting them down with a smack on the centre of the table. ‘And in doing so taking my best waitress.’ She went on as if it was that rather than just little Maddy leaving that was the problem. She picked up the remains of the moussaka as Dimitri reached up for a last scoopful, her lips tight, her eyes a little red. ‘Which no one seems to have thought through at all.’

‘Agatha could do it.’ Maddy said, her hand stilled on her wine glass, clearly afraid it was all about to fall through.

‘Agatha couldn’t do it, Maddy. She can’t be front of house. You know that. She scares all the customers away and if there’s one thing I need at the moment, it’s customers.’

There was a pause.