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To say Paige was excited about taking this part was an understatement indeed. Drama was her thing; she loved to act, and this role was her biggest challenge yet. And she was going to be playing it not only in Wales but in Dylan Thomas’s hometown.

As a family, they were loving being here, there was no doubt about that. In fact, in spite of not being Welsh—apart from through Jenna’s father—it felt as though they were exactly where they belonged. However, it hadn’t been their intention to move here after Jack had lost his job as the sales manager for a leading publisher. Their initial plan was for him to find another position in a similar field, but unfortunately it hadn’t worked out that way. The industry was suffering. Dozens if not hundreds of people had been laid off across the country, and competition for the few positions that did come up was fierce. After Jack had suffered through months of nothing but apologies and rejection, his notoriously volatile temper had collapsed into a horrible despair. He stopped attending interviews, found it hard to engage with the children, and even turned his back on the easy and passionate intimacy he and Jenna had always shared. Despite his tendency to overreact, it had unnerved her considerably to see how hard he was taking his failure to start again. When things were going his way he was ebullient, larger than life, ready to meet any challenge head on with a certainty that he’d win. Over that time she’d felt him slipping away, diminishing in spirit and hope, and it had scared her. The Jack she knew and loved was still in there, she’d remained convinced of that, but reaching him, bolstering him, and trying to make him believe in himself again had proved an almost impossible task.

Then one day, without warning, he’d suddenly announced that they should relocate to Wales.

Jenna remembered her jaw dropping.

“We need a completely fresh start,” he’d insisted, “with something of our own. We don’t want to be at any other bastard’s beck and call. We’ll be our own bosses, answer only to each other, and when we start to expand, which we will,
we’ll
do all the hiring and firing.”

Jenna hadn’t missed the way her highly successful, career-driven sister and brother-in-law had exchanged glances at this unexpected development. She didn’t blame them, as she was skeptical too, but loyalty to Jack, combined with the overwhelming relief that he seemed so determined on this new start, made her say, “I think it’s a very interesting idea, but what kind of business do you have in mind?”

“Publishing, of course,” he’d replied, as if there could be no other. “Given my own employment history, and yours as a published writer and respected freelance editor, it’s all we know, so we need to capitalize. And now, with the Internet, it’s never been easier. We can base ourselves anywhere, have a website as big as we like, and sell whatever we choose. No, wait,” he ran on as Hanna made to interrupt, “I’ve given it a lot of thought, and I reckon Wales is definitely the place to be. It’s a land full of poets, playwrights, novelists, you name it, and almost none are getting the recognition they deserve.”

“Would there be a market for them?” his brother-in-law had asked dubiously.

“Of course, if we present them in the right way. We won’t be like all these other Web-based cowboys who make you pay to be published, then do nothing to promote the work. We’ll have a totally different approach that deals with only high-quality product—that’s where you come in, Jen. You’ll be responsible for vetting the submissions and knocking the best ones into shape, and I’ll sort out the website and business plan. It shouldn’t be expensive to get off the ground, just the cost of designing the site and a few well-placed ads…Local media interest is a given, and chances are we won’t even need to go to the bank for finance, which we probably wouldn’t get anyway given how tight they are these days. We can manage everything ourselves, provided we sell this house. OK, I know that sounds radical, but the market’s gone so crazy in London that it’s got to be worth at least three times what we paid for it by now, and it’s complete madness having it sitting there doing nothing when we could be making it work for us.”

“But what about Paige?” Hanna asked, glancing worriedly at her niece.

“I’m cool with it,” Paige assured her, apparently as carried away by the idea as her father was. “It’ll be an adventure.”

Jenna simply watched as Jack pressed a kiss to their elder daughter’s forehead. “That’s my girl,” he laughed. “Never afraid to take a risk, and the younger ones will be fine. They’ll settle in no time at all.”

“What about you, Jenna?” Hanna ventured.

Deciding this wasn’t the time to argue, Jenna had simply said, “I might need a while to get my head round it, but in principle…” She shrugged. “Why not?”

That was all it had taken for Jack to spring into action. In no time at all the house was on the market, a new business management team—recommended by Hanna—had assessed the project and helped to obtain funding from the Welsh Arts Council, and ads had gone into the local papers announcing the creation of a new e-publishing venture, Celticulture.

A little over a year later they were ensconced at the southern end of the Gower Peninsula in a ten-year-old detached house designed to resemble a barn conversion, which had to be at least twice the size of the Victorian end-of-terrace they’d owned in London. Instead of a street full of stamp-sized gardens and tightly parked cars, they were at the top of a quaintly sprawled village, overlooking a wild grassy moor that stretched all the way out to Port Eynon Point, where the sea glittered and smudged into an ever-changing horizon.

It was idyllic; “God’s own country” was how Jack described it.

“You mean the back end of beyond,” Paige sometimes grumbled, but if either Jack or Jenna called her on it, she’d quickly assure them she was only kidding.

“It’s really cool,” she’d insist. “Different, and a bit weird in some ways, but I can do surfing and stuff here that I could never do in London, and I’m making loads of new friends.”

This was true; she’d taken to her new surroundings far better than they’d dared hope, and clearly enjoyed her new school, The Landings. Her new best friend, Charlotte Griffiths, lived barely a mile away, while her other new best friend, Hayley, was in Reynoldston, which wasn’t far either. There were many others in their set, as they liked to call it: Lucy, Courtenay, Cullum, Ryan, Owen—Jenna was losing track of them all now, but what mattered was how readily they had accepted Paige and how happy she seemed. She’d even started to develop a hint of a Welsh accent, which Jenna loved to hear. It was so musical and friendly, with playful little inflections that fluttered like tiny wings straight to the very core of her heart.

Her Welsh father had never lost his accent, even after four decades of living in England.

How badly she still missed him; she couldn’t imagine a time when she wouldn’t. If she concentrated hard enough, she was sure, she could hear him singing, telling stories, whispering comforting words when she needed them. She could see him working in the garden, dozing in his favorite armchair, delighting in his grandchildren, who absolutely adored him. One of the fondest, most moving memories she had of him was the way his face used to light up with surprise and joy when she’d drop in to visit without warning.

“Ah ha!” he’d cry, his arms going out to wrap her up in the warmest, most wonderful hug in the world.

Almost three years had passed since he’d been struck down with a heart attack. He hadn’t been ill, hadn’t even shown any signs of slowing up or mentioned he was feeling unwell. He’d simply collapsed one day at the office and had never come home. It was like a cruel magician’s trick: one minute he was there, the next he’d gone. She, Hanna, and their mother were still a long way from coming to terms with the loss.

Thinking of him now, as she often did in quiet moments, she hoped that wherever he was, he knew that she was living in Wales. She could see his twinkly eyes shining with delight to realize that she’d returned to his roots. It would give him so much pleasure, especially since her mother had moved into a cottage at the heart of the village. Knowing him, he’d have wholeheartedly approved of Jack’s plans for the new business, and would probably even have got involved in some way if he could.

Stirring as the next-door neighbors’ cat jumped down onto the lawn, circling the children’s trampoline, slide, and two-story playhouse before disappearing over the wall into the moorland, Jenna glanced at the blank screen of her laptop and gave a sigh of dismay.

“Take this time for yourself,” Jack had told her after depositing the younger children at their friends’ homes earlier, and before he and Paige had set off on their shoot. “We’ll be gone for a few hours, so sit with it, see what happens. I bet something will.”

He was wrong. Nothing was happening at all.

It never did these days, and she was annoyed with herself now for hoping that today might prove any different, when she knew very well that a creative flow couldn’t just be turned on and off like a tap.

She was experiencing—
suffering
would be a better choice of word—a prolonged spell of writer’s block, though she deliberately didn’t call it that. She preferred telling herself that the story wasn’t quite ready to be told yet, or the characters were still making up their minds which directions to take. It would help, a lot, if she actually knew what the story was about—or, more significantly,
whom
it was about—but she really didn’t. It was as though she’d been abandoned by her own imagination. Actually, there was no “as though” about it—she
had
been abandoned by her imagination. It had run for cover following the awful reviews for her last book, taking the best part of her confidence with it.

However, blaming a handful of critics for a book that she’d known, even when she’d delivered it, wasn’t as good as her best-selling first was hardly going to help get her past this crisis. Nor was the fact that her agent had recently reminded her that the publisher would be asking for a return of the advance if she didn’t send something in soon.

So here she was, facing the happy prospect of having to repay something in the region of twenty thousand pounds in the next couple of months unless she could come up with a synopsis at the very least. Since this wasn’t a sum she could possibly raise, and the only words she’d been able to conjure so far were “Chapter One,” things weren’t looking good.

In truth, the situation might not have felt quite so desperate if they hadn’t spent virtually everything they had on setting up here. Jack’s severance pay, her advance, the small inheritance she’d received from her father, and most of the proceeds from their London house had all gone into creating their new life. She couldn’t deny they’d been extravagant, paying for the house outright, buying themselves a new car each—a flashy coupe for her and Jack, a sturdy dog-and-people-carrier for the family—and getting the children basically anything they wanted, including computers, iPads, iPhones, PlayStations, smart TVs, scooters, bicycles, and tree houses. There was even a jukebox in the sitting room, along with a pinball machine and a giant rocking horse Jack had won in a raffle. Jenna wasn’t sure how low their funds were running these days, but she suspected it was lower than Jack was ready to admit.

“The business is due to launch in a month,” he’d reminded her only this morning, “at which point cash will start rolling in and we’ll be sitting pretty again. Better than that, we’ll be able to send a check to your publisher, leaving you free to write and deliver just when you want to. It’ll probably turn out to be exactly what you need to get the juices flowing. No more deadlines, no nasty phone calls—just you, your characters, and all the time you could wish for to go on all the journeys you’re dreaming about.”

Time—a commodity virtually unknown to busy mothers, particularly those with three children under eight, each of whom had a character, set of needs, and schedule all their own, and a teenage live wire who’d lately started showing signs of a maturity that Jenna knew she should have been prepared for but wasn’t.

Picking up her mobile as it bleeped with a text, she smiled to see the photo Jack had sent of Paige peering into a rock pool with her latest admirer, Owen Masters.
Should I be jealous?
Jack was asking.

I don’t think so,
Jenna texted back.
Will tell you more when you get back. How’s it going?

Shot enough for another feature film. Heading up to Arthur’s Stone now. How about you?

How she longed to say she was on a roll, but even if she did, he’d know as soon as he looked into her eyes when he came back that it wasn’t true.
Wondering if senna pods might help,
she replied, and smiled as she imagined him laughing.

A few minutes later the landline rang; glad of the excuse to leave her computer, she went through to the kitchen to answer.

“Hi, it’s me,” her sister declared. “Hang on, sorry, I’ll be right with you.”

Tucking the phone under her chin as she waited, Jenna reached for the kettle to fill it. How she loved this kitchen! What luxury it was to have so much space to cook and socialize and watch the kids come and go. The house was just perfect; she couldn’t love it more if she’d designed it herself, with its floor-to-ceiling windows all across the back to take in the garden and the view beyond, its characterful reclaimed beams through most of the rooms, and the highly polished sandstone floors.

The dining room was more like a conservatory off the kitchen, with French doors leading onto the garden, while the sitting room was her dream of how a sitting room should be, with an open stone fireplace at the far end, deep-cushioned sofas, tatty rugs, and endless clutter. The mess never bothered her; on the contrary, she rejoiced in it, which she knew was a reaction to all the years of having to live with her mother’s obsession with order. Trails of toys, shoes, books, crayons—everything and anything—led off the sitting room into the playroom, and very often up the stairs to the bedrooms, where another sort of chaos reigned. Jenna and Jack’s master suite was to the left of the three-sided gantry landing and was almost never off-limits. Josh’s room was next to theirs and was poised to become sleepover central just as soon as the painfully shy Josh plucked up the courage to invite more than one friend at a time. Paige’s own small suite was opposite and very definitely off-limits. The twins’ room was next to Paige’s, with a pink half for Flora and a blue one for Wills. From the landing that ran across the tall back windows it was possible to look down into the sitting room or to stand gazing out at the mesmerizing view—if anyone had the time, which they rarely did.