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it, be ready for the future or else…’

      ‘Or else what?’ asked Harry.

      Cleo couldn’t say it. She couldn’t say they’d close down.

      ‘Or else we’ll see the profits dive,’ she added lamely.

      ‘Cleo, we’ve got twenty covers for dinner tonight,’ Sheila Malin added. ‘That’s hardly bad for a week night.’

      Everyone but Cleo smiled at this clear proof of the hotel’s success.

      ‘Make that twenty-two covers. Or even twenty-three.’ Sondra patted her belly happily.

      ‘You don’t have any steak, Jacqui?’ called Barney. ‘I’m ravenous.’

      ‘Chef does not have time to whip up private meals for you, Barney,’ Cleo snapped at her brother. ‘You’ve been up here four times in the past week for dinner. Can neither of you cook?’

      ‘I’m pregnant,’ Sondra said, looking daggers at her sister-in-law. ‘Cooking makes me sick. I don’t know why they call it morning sickness, when it’s all-day sickness.’

      ‘Lots of women have to work when they’re pregnant and they can’t afford to give up their jobs at the drop of a hat because their husband’s family business will keep doling out money to support them,’ Cleo said, taking the gloves off. She knew that her parents supplemented Barney’s income with handouts. Handouts that Barney felt were entirely his due.

      ‘It’s a loan,’ snarled Sondra.

      ‘Four loans in the past two years?’

      ‘It’s none of your business.’

      ‘It’s my business when the hotel profits are being siphoned off into your pockets.’

      ‘Cleo.’ There was a warning in her father’s tone but neither Cleo nor Sondra took heed.

      ‘You could be contributing something if you were still working on reception, Sondra,’ Cleo went on. ‘We all know that Tamara is hopeless. She spends the whole time doing her nails.’

      ‘How dare you talk about my sister like that?’ shrieked Sondra.

      ‘Don’t, please,’ Sheila begged her daughter.

      ‘Yeah, who do you think you are, Cleo?’ Barney said, remembering his husbandly duty. ‘Apologise.’

      Cleo was just about to say that she had no intention of apologising because every word she’d said was true, when Harry interrupted. ‘Yes, apologise, Cleo.’

      Stunned, she spun round to look at her father. ‘For telling the truth?’ she demanded.

      ‘We don’t have big rows in this family, Cleo,’ Harry went on. ‘That gets nobody anywhere. Please apologise to Sondra.’

      Cleo felt betrayed. Her father rarely interfered in squabbles and it was hardly a family secret that she and Sondra didn’t get on. They were grown-ups; they were entitled not to get on if they didn’t want to. She loved and respected her father but he wasn’t always right. All she’d done was tell the truth and she was being punished.

      Although she knew why: her father hated rows and tried to avoid conflict at all costs. His mother had been what he euphemistically called ‘fiery’ and Harry had grown up watching his parents face each other like bullfighters, circling in rage, screaming insults several times a week. A person could have too much plate-throwing in their life, he used to say. Cleo knew she’d inherited her grandmother’s passion – although not her harsh tongue. She would never hurt anyone with a rash word – she knew better than that, no matter how passionately she felt about something. Her grandmother’s way was not the right way to do things.

      ‘You’re right, Dad,’ she said calmly now. ‘I went about it the wrong way. I’m sorry for talking about Tamara like that,’ she said to Sondra. But not sorry for the other parts. ‘That wasn’t fair. I’m going out for a walk.’ And she got up to go.

      Her father muttered something about going into the office for a few moments, and he left too, by a different door.

      

      Cleo went and sat where she’d always gone when she was wildly annoyed but trying to hide it. Down at the bottom of the garden, behind the orchard wall, on the cracked stone seat under the apple tree. The bark of the tree was coated with silver and there were no acid-green buds appearing. The tree was dying from neglect. Nobody in the Willow knew the first thing about trees and the men who worked on the garden had their hands full sorting out the front in the limited time available.

      Some of the hotel’s brides had found this secluded spot over the years and had been photographed there, just the bride and the groom, smiling under the apple tree. For that reason alone, the tree should have been taken care of but nobody had listened to Cleo when she said it. They never did. And they probably never would, Cleo realised with a jolt.

      She knew she’d changed from a tomboyish kid, but to Mum, Dad, Jason and Barney, she was still the baby of the family.

      Idly, she picked a bit of bark off the tree. Several beetles fell out, shocked at losing their home. Feeling like a murderer, Cleo tried to replace the bark but it wouldn’t stick.

      ‘Sorry, boys,’ she said to the beetles who’d made a rapid exit on the stony ground at her feet.

      They’d lost their home and the Malins would lose their home too.

      She took the piece of newspaper from her jeans pocket and unfolded it for the nth time. Nat had seen it in a trade paper and had sent it to her. He’d understood what it meant.

      ‘Roth Hotels Expansion Plans’ ran the headline. The article reported how the vast international chain of Roth Hotels had decided to turn their attention to the Irish and UK markets. Not city hotels, the article went on to say, but some of their hugely successful country resorts complete with golf, health club and riding facilities. Locations mentioned included the eastern part of Ireland. Cleo felt sick to the pit of her stomach when she thought about it.

      If a Roth Hotel opened up in Carrickwell, it would sound the death knell to the Willow.

       CHAPTER THREE

      Daisy Farrell had thought that tidying out her wardrobe was the perfect way to spend a rainy Sunday afternoon when Alex was away in London for the weekend working. But the task had palled somewhat as the day dragged on. Five o’clock and dusk arrived at the same gloomy moment, and every single item of clothing Daisy owned was still piled on the bedroom floor in their normally immaculate apartment, in so many tottering piles. All black, of course. Despite the fashion bibles screeching that red or pink or white were the new black, Daisy knew – like every fashionista worth her salt – that black would always be the new black.

      Black made every lump and bump disappear and turned slender into skinny. Who needed bulimia when you had black?

      She had so much stuff, she reflected, wishing she’d never started. How was it that a woman whose very job was picking clothes for other people – she was a buyer for Carrickwell’s chicest designer shop, Georgia’s Tiara – seemed to have so many fashion mistakes in her own wardrobe?

      ‘This will have to go,’ Daisy decided, holding up a tweedy skirt that had never quite suited her. ‘And this.’ Drapey chiffon shirts had never been her style, yet she loved them. They’d sold buckets of them in the shop, though. Daisy’s style might waver when it came to dressing herself, but her instinct was spot on when it came to her job.

      ‘How do you do it?’ asked people, fascinated at how she knew the shop’s customers would buy the clothes she bought at the fashion fairs six months in advance of stocking them.

      ‘You pick clothes in January and then when summer comes, you hope they’re in fashion and that women here buy

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