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“But I like her,” her mum protested. “She helps me.”

“She already has a job.”

Her mum reached out and grabbed Frances’s wrist, her fingernails digging in. “I don’t want a stranger. Don’t leave me with a stranger.”

“Okay, Mum,” Frances said, trying to loosen her grip whilst processing the sudden change in her mum. She’d never lashed out before.

She let go suddenly and scurried back to her chair in front of the television, leaving Frances to examine the red marks on her skin. Her eyes stung as shock settled in her chest.

“I’ll be back in a minute.”

Tears were already rolling down her cheeks as she closed her bedroom door behind her. She grabbed a handful of tissues and sat on the edge of the bed. If she was going to react this way to the idea of a carer, a stranger as she put it, what was she going to do? Lucie was a stranger, but then again, she had been there for her mum a few times now, and they were probably quite stressful times. She must have made some impression on her mum, just as she had on Frances herself.

Once again, Frances was being pushed to choose, and once again it wasn’t really a choice at all. Her work could never matter more than her mum’s welfare, but that didn’t stop the resistance rising in her chest. Had her mum faced the same conflict? Choosing work over embracing her role as a mother? Her gaze drifted to the bedside table. A photograph sat in its usual place, one of her on her first day as managing director. Mum stood beside her, arm looped through hers, a look of pride on her face.

Thirteen years ago, she hadn’t been ready to walk away from the career she’d worked so hard for, but with her dad gone, the hall was waiting for her. It was a role she had been born into, whether she liked it or not, and she had grown into it. She and her mum had worked side by side for years, Frances learning, absorbing, taking on more and more until she was the one correcting mistakes and holding things together.

Then the time came when she had no alternative but to make her mum step down. She didn’t even get the retirement she deserved. All that awaited her was years of decline.

It was so unfair.

Frances stared at the photograph, her vision blurring again. The time she had once hoped they would spend together in their later years, she now wished away in the vain hope her mum wouldn’t suffer for too long.

She wiped her eyes and blew her nose, helplessness settling deep. Her own life felt beyond her control, and yet her mum’s was completely within it. Her stomach tightened. There would be no one to defer to, no one to step in if she got it wrong. Every decision was hers to make.

CHAPTER 9

Every step Lucie took toward the staff room renewed the ache in her feet. A long and cold twelve-hour shift had numbed her fingers, toes, and nose. Her cheeks, on the other hand, burned from excessive smiling.

“What’s that smell?” Jon snarked from across the room as she entered. She hadn’t worked with him yet and only knew his name.

“Smells like burnt toast,” Carolina, one of the younger elves, chimed in.

Seriously, was this a school playground? Lucie rolled her eyes as she headed for her locker and pulled out her rucksack. Was it so impossible to keep anything quiet? How had Frances managed it for so long?

“Why were you even in the boss’s house?” Jon pressed.

“Apparently she’s a lesbian, just like you,” Nathan cut in, his lip curling as he spoke.

Frances was a lesbian?

Setting that startling revelation aside for the moment, Lucie noticed the room had fallen into silence. Why did someone’s sexuality still get that kind of reaction? Couldn’t people just get over it and move on with their lives? She accepted that some people were heterosexual, no matter how icky she found that.

She considered scowling at Nathan, then decided encouraging the wrinkles wasn’t worth it — not for him. She wasn’t ashamed, but she could have done without the judging stares that now swept the room.

“You could have an affair with the boss,” Carolina put in as she put on a scarf. “Assuming you aren’t already. I’ve always fancied that — but with a bloke, you know. I’m not like you.”

The condescension in her tone made Lucie’s stomach sour. She dragged her coat over her elf uniform, hoisted her rucksack onto her shoulder, and slipped out of the room without so much as a word.

Leaving the hall, she headed down the north drive to the village under the light of her phone torch, grateful to have avoided Jon’s question. Why was she even lying for Rose? If she’d known it would cause all this, would she have still done it?

Of course she would have.

It was irritating that everyone was making such a thing of it. Why couldn’t they leave her alone? Life had never felt this complicated in Botswana; she was beginning to miss its simplicity more than she had expected.

With December around the corner, she had five or so weeks left. After that, her temporary job would be done, and whatever this strange, tangled connection was that she had with Frances and Rose would end with it.

The thought unsettled her more than she expected.