The Year of Surprising Acts of Kindness

by Laura Kemp

Genres: General Fiction; Women's Fiction; Romantic Comedy

Synopsis

Sometimes all it takes to make the world a better place is a small act of kindness...

When Ceri Price arrives in the small seaside village of Dwynwen in West Wales, she only means to stay for a couple of nights - long enough to scatter her mother's ashes, and then go back to her life as a successful make-up entrepreneur.

But a case of mistaken identities means she lands a job as the barmaid in the local pub, she unexpectedly finds friendship, and wonders if love might follow... But when the plans for a new housing estate put the local woodland under threat, she fears the way of life here could disappear.

Then mysterious acts of kindness start springing up around the village - a string of bunting adorns the streets, a new village signpost appears out of nowhere and someone provides paint to spruce up the houses on the seafront. Who is behind these acts of kindness and can they help in the race to save the village from the faceless developers...?

Welcome to Dwynwen: Village of Love. Where friendship flourishes and love blossoms...

Release date: December 1, 2017

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 400

Sample

Prologue



Tears threatened as Ceri Price caught her sister in the act: packing up Mum’s life into shabby cardboard boxes.

It was too soon for that. Ceri was still at the point of coming to the house to check their mother really had gone. As if by some miracle, she’d walk in to find her as she was before she got ill: in a cleaning gilet, humming gently, a cloth in hand, delighted by her daughter’s interruption and asking, did she have time for a quick cuppa? But, of course, she was never there. Ceri’s irrational hope would plummet into fresh, suffocating grief, and she’d have to sit for a minute on the worn sofa, listening to the silence, wondering how on earth there could be any more sadness because surely, in the six weeks since Mum’s death, hadn’t she used it all up?

Today, though, Ceri had felt an overwhelming gratitude that she wouldn’t be alone with her sorrow when she had seen Tash’s old banger parked up outside number thirty-three Junction Road. For Ceri to see her own grief reflected in her sister’s eyes wouldn’t diminish the emptiness inside, but at least they could hang onto each other, as they had done at the funeral, a month ago, when Tash had let down her guard and they’d found mutual comfort in the shared blood pumping through their veins, keeping their mother alive in both their hearts. And as she’d pocketed the mail from the doormat to read later, Ceri had felt the relief only Tash’s presence could provide. She would understand that Ceri had nowhere to go to hide from her misery: her ex Dave was long gone and she had no boyfriend to cuddle nor kids to pour her love into. Not even work was an escape as it had once been, because Ceri’s business was all wrapped up in Mum. Tash would get that, instinctively, Ceri had thought, turning into the lounge.

But the sight that greeted her had been the deepest and most savage of betrayals. And Ceri could only watch in disbelief as Tash moved purposefully between piles of Mum’s belongings, selecting blouses and shoes for one box and throwing tights and bras into a black bin bag.

‘What you doing, kid?’ Ceri asked shakily, taking in the empty shelves, stripped of every last trace of nearly three decades of what she had called home. This was where they had grown up, sharing the second bedroom from childhood right up until Tash had moved out four and a half years ago, just before Mum’s forgetfulness had been diagnosed as dementia. So much more than bricks and mortar, this two-up two-down in Crewe was where they’d learned their table manners; fought over who got to put the angel on top of the Woolworths Christmas tree; argued over who washed up and who wiped after tea when they were old enough to help; dished out advice, most of the time uninvited, on boys and hairstyles as teenagers; laughed and laughed together in front of the TV; and provided unconditional support when the chips were down, the three of them against the world. It was where Mum had taught them to be decent, hardworking and kind human beings, just like her. The birthplace of Ceri’s business and where her mother’s life ended. But there was nothing left to suggest this house had witnessed their lives, good and bad. Just bare walls, the telly trussed up in a straitjacket of wires and plugs, the glass cabinet robbed of trinkets and four dents in the carpet where the table legs had been.

‘Getting it ready, like we said. To sell.’ Tash declared inaccurately, not stopping to soften the blow with a smile. Instead she kept busy, avoiding eye contact, emotionless, examining what was next for the cull.

Breathless, Ceri felt faint at the desecration: how could Tash do this? Didn’t her sister want to cherish Mum for as long as possible, like she did? It was a bewildering blow to conclude that no, Tash obviously didn’t. Particularly when the last will and testament of Angharad Bronwen Price, which had left them her ageing but spotless terrace, her one-careful-owner Ford Fiesta plus £15,000 of hard-earned money from the Rolls-Royce factory, had been filed away less than twenty-four hours ago after the sisters had been granted probate.

‘Actually we said we’d do it, you know, when we both felt it was the right time,’ Ceri said to Tash’s back, hating the nervousness in her voice but this was how it was around her younger sister. ‘Don’t upset Tash, you know how she gets,’ she and Mum had always advised one another. But now Mum was gone and Ceri was raw and lost without her – even more so now because Tash was buzzing with focus. How long had she been here, going through Mum’s things? And how many times had she been here without telling Ceri? She stepped forward to slow her sister’s hands which were wrapping a small crystal dolphin. One of Mum’s favourites.

‘This is for the charity shop,’ Tash said, carrying on, oblivious. ‘Over there,’ she said, pointing her petite nose at a mound of shiny black bags, ‘is for the tip … I’ve put your things to one side,’ she added, gesturing at a plastic tub by the gas fire, ‘but you’d better go through what’s going, just to check.’

Her things? These were all her things, their things. Ceri had owned a penthouse flat for a few months now in the nearby leafy town of Alderley Edge, but she’d hardly stayed there. Home was here, where she’d nursed Mum through four years of decline. And until twelve months ago, when she’d finally quit to run her own business, her bar job at the workingmen’s club had been just up the road. But even before Mum’s health had suffered, Ceri had never wanted to leave because she loved her warm and caring company. It meant that their belongings, Mum’s ornaments and Ceri’s knick-knacks, sat very happily in the house side by side. So Tash having taken it upon herself to clear Ceri’s possessions without asking was hasty, not to mention insensitive. Her smarting eyes wandered over the wreckage – it was a flaming mess.

No longer the ‘neat as a pin’ nest shining with Mr Muscle in which she and Mum had taken so much satisfaction – instead, it was higgledy-piggledy with clothes draped over the arms of the settee, the rest of which was smothered in Aldi carrier bags of hangers and CDs, and a crate of books and vases marked ‘boot sale’. The floor was barely visible in between a mountain of electricals, including her hairdryer, curling tongs, iron and toaster, and battered cardboard boxes which were stacked with breakables wrapped in old copies of the Crewe Chronicle. Then she gasped when she saw Mum’s pans ready for burial.

‘You can’t chuck those! They’re what started it all. The business. They’re special.’

That set of cast-iron pots was everything to Ceri. For the heavy, flat-bottomed saucepans, which she’d used to create homemade make-up when she had been dirt poor, had directly led to what she was now: a self-made entrepreneur with her own cosmetics brand and a faithful following online. And if Tash had ransacked the kitchen … Ceri darted in and saw an empty space where the lovely old single-oven duck-egg blue Aga on which they’d cooked had stood. This wasn’t a clearance – this was rape and pillage.

‘What have you done with it?’

‘Oh come on, Ceri, the Aga was ancient. Kev got fifty quid for it. Your half is in there, on the side.’

As if Ceri was bothered with twenty-five pounds – that cooker was priceless.

‘And why’s the tea caddy being thrown?’ she said, grabbing it from the top of a box that Tash had labelled ‘bric-a-brac’ which sat on the worktop.

The beautiful full-bellied silver container, with a hinged lockable lid and four intricate feet, had stored their PG Tips for as long as Ceri could remember. But more importantly, it had played a part in her and her Mum’s nightly ritual of counting their blessings over a brew at bedtime. Well, it had before Mum had withered away. Ceri had been planning to use it for her remains.

Tash turned to face her, her eyes cold, and shrugged. ‘So take whatever you fancy. And feel free to help me. If you’re staying?’

Ceri felt the accusing stab that she’d left Tash to do everything and then the injustice of it, for she had been the one to manage the spoon-feeding and hair-combing as Mum’s illness worsened. Ceri felt herself reeling inside, shaking. She was already shattered from her bereavement, which had come on top of her mourning as Mum had slipped away, replaced by a stranger. The exhaustion from carrying the guilt of wishing she’d acted sooner, rather than thinking it was scattiness when Mum had turned up in her slippers during one of Ceri’s shifts at the club. The uphill struggle of trying to be positive when the prognosis was anything but. Worn out too from caring for her when Ceri’s homemade make-up hobby began to take off as a business and she was still working behind the bar. Weary from sleeping on Mum’s sofa so she could hear if she wandered lost out of the dining room, which had become her bedroom because the stairs could’ve killed her. Barely living in her new place, which didn’t even feel like hers. It went on and on …

But still she resisted causing a scene. This had to be Tash’s way of grieving. Perhaps it was remorse for how absent she’d been this past couple of years. Yet Ceri had never blamed her sister. The official line was that Tash had a young family to raise and a husband who worked all hours to put bread on the table. But Ceri knew that Tash found it hard to cope when Mum had begun to ask who this was coming into her home. The truth was that she and Tash were made of different stuff – different fathers, with one born out of love and the other out of circumstance. Ceri had grown up knowing Mum had adored her dad, Emilio, a handsome fisherman whom she met in Spain on a girls’ holiday in 1986. She had gone back over to see him a few times in the following year, to make sure he was The One. And he was. But plans for Mum to emigrate tragically ended when his trawler went down in a Mediterranean storm a month after she’d got back home in 1987, just weeks before she’d found out she was pregnant.

Tash’s dad, on the other hand, had been what Mum called ‘a mistake’ and their marriage, forged on the rebound, she’d said, hadn’t lasted. Neither had Ronnie’s role as a father. They had parted when Tash was a baby and Ceri was three. Ceri understood how deeply her sister had felt about only having one parent. It had left her ‘strong and silent’, as she liked to put it, although Ceri saw it as prickly. Ceri, however, had always felt her father’s presence. Mum told her often enough that she had his spirit. She looked like him too, with thick raven hair, olive skin and, she presumed, his chocolate-brown eyes. The only photo there was of him, in a dusted-to-death frame which Ceri had claimed as her own the night Mum had passed away, was a blurry scene of sand, scorching sun and rugged, truffle-coloured rocks. The pair of them were golden: Mum’s eyes, as aqua as the twinkling water behind them, dancing with love as he kissed her buttercup hair, which was flying in the warm breeze, obscuring his face. One of Dad’s arms was around her back, the other lay across Mum’s bronzed tummy – had Ceri been conceived already? – and she was nakedly beautiful, fresh, minus the Eighties sweep of blusher and gooey gloss she wore in every other photo from her youth. Her lime-green bandeau bikini was from when she could fit into Topshop, she’d say, along with how Dad, being from ‘the continent’, could get away with those tiny white Speedos and a thick silver chain, from which hung a locket containing her picture.

Thinking of the photo reminded Ceri of what was really important and she held up the caddy as she went to Tash in the lounge.

‘When we get Mum back, we can take her to Wales, like she wanted. Sprinkle her ashes in the sea in the village where she was born.’ Mum had refused to get on a plane again after she lost Emilio. And she’d be damned if she did when she was dead. So Wales it would be, in what Mum said was the most beautiful bay in the world. In her hall-of-mirrors mind during the last few years, she’d say she’d doggy paddle round to the Costa del Sol, find him among the mermaids and sardines.

‘We can scatter her ashes and do the reading she left …’ These instructions had been presented to her by the solicitor, Mr Jennings, in a sealed envelope which Ceri carried everywhere with her. ‘What you reckon?’ Ceri was smiling, hoping this would be enough to remind Tash of their bond as their mother’s girls.

Tash swallowed hard and wiped a tear from her cheek. There, the atmosphere was gone and—

‘You’ve got to stop this.’ Tash’s words were sharp, like her pinched features, which were even more drawn than usual. Ceri’s knees went weak and she wished she’d been wearing sensible flats; but heeled boots were part of her image.

‘Stop what?’ she said, alarmed.

There was silence except for the splash of cars on the rain-slick street outside and the tick of the carriage clock presented to Mum after ten years’ factory service, which … wasn’t on the mantelpiece. She scanned the room, straining her ears and located it on some jigsaws destined for a good cause. Ceri didn’t think there was any piece of her heart left to shatter. She was wrong.

‘Look, Ceri,’ Tash said, sighing, dropping her shoulders and tilting her head to show she wasn’t after a row. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way but … you’re living on a different planet to me.’

‘What do you mean?’ They had the same mum, had gone to the same school, loved sweet and sour chicken balls and had borrowed each other’s clothes and eyeliner for as long as they could remember.

‘It’s just … Mum was cuckoo by the time she asked to be scattered there. Why don’t we just do it in the garden? She loved pottering out the back. Look, it’s … I just don’t have the time.’

The swirl of leaves on the beige carpet beneath Ceri’s feet began to swim. What was she on about?

‘The kids, they’re exhausting, I hardly see Kev and I know it’s only peanuts but we’d go under without my evening job. This house, selling it is our chance for a better life. Or do you want your nieces growing up scallies?’ She wasn’t being sarky – she sounded desperate.

‘If you need money, I’ll give you money,’ Ceri said, wanting to help, because decency was what Mum had taught them.

‘I don’t want your money.’ Tash didn’t say it with spite but resignation. ‘This will make all the difference to us.’

‘I told you I’d buy your share of the house. What did they say it was worth? A hundred and fifty thousand? I’ve got seventy-five thousand. I’ll give it to you now. The lump sum I got from the contract, it’s just sat there doing ’owt in my account.’

Surely that would persuade her? Ceri couldn’t stand it: wiping out the memories because they had no other option.

But Tash shook her head. She looked just like Mum with her big blue eyes and blonde bob and it caught Ceri in the throat.

‘It’s not enough. The estate agent says if we do it up, if Kev tarts up the kitchen and the bathroom, you know, in the nights and at the weekend, we’ll get another fifty thousand.’

Ceri could get that together too. It gave her a start – to be so loaded she could get the funds no sweat still astonished her. Despite all her hard work and the twenty-hour days, part of her still felt like a barmaid from Crewe. But was this actually about the money? Or Tash’s own stab at making it? Just like Ceri had.

‘It might not be much to you but to us it’s an extra bit of garden, where we could have a swing, or another bedroom so the girls have one each. In the right catchment area for a nice school. Not grotty like round here.’

Her place was two streets away from Mum’s. Yes, it might be lacking in the fancy-pants department but Tash would realise not everywhere enjoyed such a community feel, just as Ceri herself had found out, knowing no one in the cut-above stretch of listed townhouses which had been converted into apartments at £350,000 a pop.

‘Can’t you see? Don’t you remember what it’s like to be skint?’

Ceri shut her eyes and cast her mind back. Past the personalised numberplate of CER 1 on her nippy sports car, the designer gear and her flat in the area known as the Golden Triangle populated by footballers and their wives, reality stars and actors. Back to the sticky floor of the club where she’d worked for a pittance, calculating meal plans to make her money go further and hunting down the cheapest utilities suppliers. Eking out her nail varnish by adding drops of remover to thin it and adding moisturiser to her foundation to make it go further. Recalling how, four years ago, out of economic necessity, she’d hit upon the idea of creating homemade tinted lip gloss. Once she’d paid the bills and put a bit aside for her wedding to Dave, there was very little left from her minimum wage: she could neither afford to replace the contents of her make-up bag nor buy birthday presents. But if she stirred up her own, using whatever was in the cupboards, she could do both because a little went a long way. It took her back to her childhood when the Avon lady came round and Ceri would imagine her mum getting ready for a ball when really she was only going up the club on a rare Saturday night.

Time had been on her side, too, because she’d stay in when she wasn’t working to keep Mum company. And her mother absolutely loved it, especially the cherry lip gloss, made from mashed-up strained fruit added to melted beeswax, cocoa butter and olive oil. Whenever Ceri had touched colour to her lips, Mum would come alive: it was their way of connecting as mother and daughter, even if it was only for a split second. That joy, plus the compliments she received not just for her own made-up face but from those who received her gifts, spurred Ceri on to develop DIY blusher, mascara and eyeshadow. She began to sell some on eBay and came up with the idea of doing online tutorials, loading them onto YouTube, racking up views, likes and shares. Then the cosmetic companies had come calling and the big bucks began to roll in. And yet, still, she saved hard and swore by her own lip gloss. She’d called the business Cheap As Chic, for goodness sake, of course she bloody remembered what it was like to be skint.

‘What are you on now? Ten grand a month …?’

In adverts on her website alone. Never mind the extra when she recommended a product online.

‘I’m chuffed to bits for you, I really am. But—’

‘But what? I haven’t changed.’ It came out defensive but Ceri almost believed it, she really did.

Tash’s eyebrows lifted ever so slightly. Enough to make the temperature of Ceri’s blood rise. ‘What are you saying?’

Because she’d worked her butt off for success. She had spent hours and days and weeks and dozens of months making something of herself: cramming in research and ingredient testing while at the same time tending to Mum. A labour of love which had grown and become big enough to earn her a living. More than a living, actually, and more than a way to leave the soggy beer mats behind: a contradiction of her previously held belief that she was no good at anything apart from serving others. She had a business head and could strike a deal.

‘You want for nothing,’ Tash threw out bitterly.

Yes, this was true. Ceri had so much stuff she didn’t know what to do with it. Her apartment was full of handbags, posh frocks and shoes worth what a family would spend on their monthly food shop – and she hadn’t even bought most of it. Every day freebie samples would arrive by courier, with invites left, right and centre to events in Manchester, Liverpool and beyond: it was part of the game of ‘you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours’. Getting paid ten grand for personal appearances was pretty obscene when all she had to do was turn up wearing a full face of slap.

And it dawned on Ceri, glancing into her mum’s little kitchen, where it had all begun, this lifestyle was the opposite of what she had created and what she stood for. Her aim had been to make folk happy and confident, for a fraction of the price you’d pay in the shops. Now she was raking in large sums of money from big corporations. Over the past six weeks, she had started to worry her work was no longer the passion nor the saviour it had been when Mum was alive. Rather, since she’d gone, it had started to feel meaningless and shallow. Ceri had hoped it was just her grief that was making her so unsettled, but it was keeping her awake at night: in the dark she’d question what was next for her in life, and wonder at the state of her integrity. She hadn’t known what she wanted to change only that she no longer felt she wanted to go on doing the same. Tash was making out Ceri had lost sight of herself. Was there truth in that?

‘Your life, it’s all surface,’ Tash jabbed again.

Ceri took a shaky breath as she considered the evidence: the hangers-on who’d expected her to pay for the drinks at the best nightspots in Manchester. The men, for once less interested in her bra than her brass. Getting slagged off by so-called friends on Facebook. Her old haunts going quiet when she walked in. Knowing this wasn’t all new to her – she’d taken it on the chin when she’d needed her escape. But looking at it now, she was connecting the dots and understanding she was unhappy and had been for a while. This was a reckoning that had been coming for months. And she would’ve given everything to be back behind the bar when she had been broke but cheery.

‘I bet you got a million Valentine’s Day cards today but you’ve not a soul to share it with.’

Tash was right. The office had been filling up with Valentine-related promotional crap all morning – helium love hearts, fancy chocolates, and a teddy bear handed to her by some poor student paid to dress up as Cupid by one company. But there wasn’t anyone special. And she wouldn’t remind herself by going along to one of a load of 14 February balls or date nights. Dave had been the last man to love her, back when life had been straightforward. When they’d ticked along and it was all laid out for her. The plan to get hitched on the pitch at the Crewe Alexandra ground, a finger buffet at the Gresty pub after, to move in together and have kids. Actually, she was relieved she hadn’t been landed with the married name Ceri Berry. And while Dave had been reliable and grounded, he hadn’t liked her new lifestyle: he was the traditional type, who wanted a chippy tea on a Friday and his woman beside him. She craved being with someone she could trust. That was why her sister’s opinion mattered to her so much, because Tash wasn’t afraid of falling out of favour or losing a slot in her schedule: she was one of the few who could still tell her like it was. Ceri was approaching rock bottom now but there was an inch of fight left.

‘I’ve got Jade.’ Her best friend with whom she’d worked at the bar, and who made Adele look frumpy. And who’d been the first one to tell her that maybe her make-up could lead somewhere.

‘She’s your PA,’ Tash said sadly. ‘She’s staff.’

Ceri’s stomach dropped and her head whirled: she felt a husk of the person she was, the person she’d been just that morning.

‘You think you can fix things with a flash of cash,’ Tash said, not unkindly. ‘And that’s fine for you, you’ll not be pulling up the sofa looking for spare change. Never. You’re not like the rest of us. You’ve got everything. But this, now, this is our one shot. Our potential.’

The blunt admission made Ceri’s shoulders heave with sobs. Suddenly, drowning in the bleakness, everything she had felt insignificant and pointless. From the expensive clothes on her body to her own Cheap As Chic brand mascara on her lashes. It had always been her goal to give something back, yet she remembered now how she had been too overloaded to answer that charity’s call for some donated goodies to use as a prize in their raffle; and the way she had let down the local sixth form college, who’d asked her to talk to the kids about making something of yourself.

Tash’s arms enfolded her until Ceri had run out of crying. Her sister pulled back and looked into her eyes.

‘Me and Kev, we need to do this. For us. We have to get this house on the market. Please, Ceri. I’m begging you.’

She heard the words rebounding off the naked walls, and as she sniffed, she could still smell Mum’s presence. The essence of her had been kindness, that’s what she’d stood for, thinking of others. Mum would’ve wanted Ceri to do this for Tash, to look after her. When it came down to that, how could she refuse?

‘Course,’ she said, barely a whisper. Not knowing how she was going to get through this. Because she’d had everything. But really she had nothing. No blessings to count at all. She had to go. To a place where no one knew her. To escape the torment of losing not just her mother but her way.













1



Ceri blew her cheeks with relief as she turned the hairpin bend after four and three-quarter hours behind the wheel.

Thank God, she thought as the rain lashed down on the windscreen, I can’t wait to get in a hot bath to warm myself up and – Woah!

The road plunged suddenly and the sea came at her, smacking her right in the chops. She slammed on the brakes, feeling the wheels skid, wondering if she was hanging off the edge of the land, teetering over water. Her head banking left then right from vertigo, this felt like the end of the world, not how Mum had described it at all.

Her feet were rooted to the pedals but still the car shook from the gusts which came from all around and the wipers, which had been on full since Mid Wales, were screaming in panic.

The terrifying waves were so angry they thrashed against themselves, sending up white spray like furious spittle. What did you expect, you fool, she thought. The warnings that she was entering the wilds had been there – down ski-slope dips and up learning-curve climbs, through snaking lanes tunnelled beneath canopies of twisted bare branches and nerve-wracking mountain paths which zig-zagged so perilously close to sheer drops her knuckles had turned white.

The constant ‘recalculating’ of the sat nav, the asking the way at strange petrol stations and eerie tea rooms. For this was the land M&S and Costa Services had forgotten.

And no wonder, because she was staring at the bleakest excuse for civilisation she’d ever seen.

‘You. Have. Got. To. Be. Joking. Mum,’ Ceri said to the tea caddy in her bag on the passenger seat.

It was a one-street muddy puddle of a village which hugged a crescent of sea the colour of fag ash and ended in a treacherously steep headland of rock and bracken.

In contrast to what Mum had claimed in her final groggy days full of medication, there was neither sand nor an apple green, sky blue, royal purple, bright white or flamingo pink row of homes to be seen. Instead, the tide threw up on the shore and the handful of dirty death-pallor buildings with harsh black guttering looked like a bad set of teeth. Ceri had the urge to get the Domestos out – no wonder Mum had been obsessed with cleaning if she came from a place like this.

What appeared to be a shop, tongue-twistingly named Caban Cwtch, however you said that, overlooked the so-called beach. It had an empty forecourt save for a prostrate sandwich board which, no doubt, had passed out from boredom. As for the palm trees and ferns and Welsh wildflowers Mum had described, there were dead pots by a broken bench and brambly hedges keeping everything in – or out, it looked that unfriendly.

‘I’m sorry to say this, Mum, but what a shithole.’

How differently today had started. Her breezy road trip in the soft Cheshire sunshine had begun just before midday, when Jade had waved her off from the office in Alderley Edge where Ceri had gone early doors to tie up some loose ends; including recording a video for her YouTube channel to say she was having a little break to get herself ready for the new range. She’d felt upbeat that she’d finally made the decision, for she’d wrestled with taking time off in the days after Tash had asked to sell Mum’s house. Ceri had made excuses – the business needed her; she had too many appointments to cancel. But the sadness of life without Mum and the bitter taste when she shook hands with yet another person who’d smelled money didn’t subside. It just rose higher. And when a ‘for sale’ board went up in the tiny square of Mum’s front garden, well, she thought she’d drown. Fight or flight had kicked in. A holiday wouldn’t kill her, because she felt dead already. So she’d booked a cottage from Friday to Friday, told Jade she was having a week away and messaged her sister to say she was off to Wales; if they rec. . .