Chapter Seven

The next day, Elena drove slowly to the nursery in the van. There was nothing more that she could do for her father at present, she thought unhappily.

He was going to have to deal with the fact that his life was never going to be the same again, but that would take time. Her brow was pounding out her tension. Reasoning was a challenge when she felt as though the shock of recent events had set up a barrier between her and her family.

She was still struggling to accept that, in the space of five days, her whole life had fallen down round her like a house of cards and with it the future that she had taken for granted.

The city where she had lived from birth would no longer be her home. She would be barred from the gardens where she had grown up and happily worked whenever she had a moment free.

The business she had labored so hard to build would pass on to a stranger and might not even survive. After all, the profit margins at the nursery were low and, with Andrea taking over her fat