HEALING

With her whole world crashing down around her, all she could think of now was escape

Your usual, Mabel?’

‘Hmm?’ Mabel glanced up at her PA, Holly. ‘Only if you’re heading out for lunch anyway.’

Holly, an efficient young woman they’d hired straight from college, rolled her eyes. ‘I’m driving into town so it’s no problem. If I didn’t fetch you a coffee and a panini, you’d starve!’

Mabel grinned. ‘You sound like my mother! Actually, scratch that. My mum tends to be as vague as me.’

Her mum, Gwen, moved abroad when she remarried after Mabel’s dad died. They got on OK, but had never been particularly close.

One of the things that had bonded Mabel to Will when they first met was matching stories of absent parents who definitely cared, but had rarely doted. In the case of Will, his parents had taken off for the Algarve when he was 18, selling the family home and giving him a deposit towards his own flat. Meeting him on her graphic design course, Mabel had been struck by how grown up and ‘together’ he seemed. He’d listened in a serious way to her hopes, dreams and fears, then shared his own. They’d had so much in common from the start.