Page 55 of Secret Paths

I look away.

There is a faint reflection of us in the kitchen window. Me in my half-open shirt, hair disordered from her hands. Mandy at the table, composed enough to pass for calm unless you know where to look.

I know where to look now.

That might be another problem.

“I keep hearing my own voice,” I say.

Mandy does not move. “Saying what?”

“That I should be aiming higher.”

“Higher than what?”

I gesture vaguely, because apparently my future now lives somewhere near her ceiling. “This. A hotel accounts job. Day-to-day finance. Normal hours. A salary I can live on, but not one I would brag about.”

“Were you planning to brag?”

“No.”

“Then that is one problem solved.”

I give her a look.

She lifts one shoulder. “You invited honesty.”

“I absolutely did not.”

“You stayed in my kitchen.”

“That was a tactical error.”

Her mouth curves, but she lets the silence come back.

I pull out one of the chairs and sit before my legs decide to do something dramatic, like carry me back outside. The wood creaks beneath me.

“Dad and Mum spent years making that place theirs. Half the village still calls it my mother’s cottage, as if I am only looking after it until she comes back and tells me I have put the mugs in the wrong cupboard.”

Mandy’s face softens, but she does not interrupt.

“When they died, Lexi had the pub. I had the cottage. It was not that neat, obviously, but that is how it felt. She had her place, I had mine.” I rub my palms over my thighs. “I have complained about that house for years. The roof, the boiler, the garden, the fact that every door sticks depending on the weather. But the thought of selling it because the bank decided St Claire was no longer worth a branch?”

My throat goes rough.

I stop and look at the table.

There is a small scratch in the wood beside my hand. A pale line, thin as a thread.

“That feels like losing more than a job,” Mandy says.

I breathe out slowly. “Yes.”

There. One word. No joke to soften it. No clever little escape hatch.

Just yes.

Mandy reaches across the table and squeezes my hand.