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now that her mind was made up, Jennifer flatly refused to return to see her dream cottage on the market. She had said her farewells at Christmas, contacted a reputable removals and shipping company, who were poised for action, and that, as far as she was concerned, was that. She refused to let Theo travel alone. But with no holiday rental from Goose Cottage now that it was for sale, things were desperate.
    Which was where Ellen came in. Unlike Goose Cottage, the Shack (a far less des. res., built from a flat-pack and perched jauntily on a clifftop) had sold before the agent’s brochures were printed. It had sold before either Richard or Ellen was ready, before they had divided up their few possessions, found homes for their pets or applied for their visas, in Richard’s case to Australia, in Ellen’s to the World.
    Detouring via Oddlode en route to the World would not have been on Ellen’s travel itinerary had she found time to write one, but saying no to her mother was not an easy option. She could use her time there to plan her trip, Jennifer pointed out. She could treat it as a holiday, enjoy the cottage – she’d hardly stayed there, after all.
    They both knew why. Jennifer’s hatred of Richard had made those few stays uncomfortable. Her obvious jubilation that the relationship was over was so infuriating that Ellen longed to tell her to get stuffed. She’d always disliked twee, over-perfect Goose Cottage and blamed it for her father’s ill-health. She had eventually agreed to go there for her father’s sake. She could have stayed in Cornwall with friends until she was better organised, but she had known that, sooner or later, Theo Jamieson would defy his wife and come home to try to sort things out. She hated to think of him away from his precious Spanish coast, stuck in a village he disliked, living in a house that had almost killed him in the making.
    She planned to make her stay as short as possible. She would get the cottage sold, find homes for Snorkel and Fins, plot out her trip, book her first flight, pack her rucksack and leave. With any luck, it shouldn’t take more than a fortnight.
    Back at the jeep, Fins was looking out of the hole in his basket again, his swivelling head resembling a fluffy black and white periscope.
    While Snorkel jumped back into the car, Ellen quickly checked the surfboards on the roof rack, still annoyed at herself for not taking the money that Foley’s Sports in Bude had offered her for them. By telling them to shove their paltry hundred pounds where the sun didn’t shine, she was still lumbered with the last thing that a Cotswold tourist needed. By contrast, she’d taken fifty pounds for her bike from Trisha at the pottery, and now wished she’d held on to it for a few more weeks. The lanes here were cycling heaven and she needed to stay fit.
    Her T-shirt was dark with sweat now and felt disgustingly clammy. She grabbed the top bag from the boot and dug inside it for a fresh one. She checked around – there hadn’t been a car in sight the entire time she’d been walking, so she was hardly worried – then quickly set about swapping, forgetting that she was still wearing a baseball cap, anchored to her head by the ponytail pulled through its back. With her face full of hot, wet cotton and her arms trapped above her shoulders, Ellen swung her head around irritably, trying to get the neck of the T-shirt beyond her ponytail and the cap’s peak.
    Of course, that was the exact moment when the first traffic the lane had seen for twenty minutes rounded the corner. And it wasn’t any old traffic. It was a huge lorry with three surprised faces lined up at the windscreen. Ellen knew this because it drew level just as she broke free of her wrestling hold.
    Amazingly, her dark glasses and baseball cap had stayed on, affording her a degree of anonymity, if little modesty. She had no choice but to brazen it out. Holding the T-shirt to her chest, she saluted them as they passed. She