‘He responds well to being sworn at, just like humans.’

Jenny smiled and returned to the stove, started making coffee. ‘Want one?’

Dorothy shook her head. ‘I’m going out, meeting a friend.’

‘Who?’

Dorothy stopped. She was wearing loose cotton trousers and a maroon silk blouse, open at the neck. They both suited her, she always knew how to dress well. Jenny was envious, her elegant mother gliding through life. Her calm air gave the impression that nothing fazed her. Jenny couldn’t understand why she didn’t seem more upset about her dad.

Dorothy put her hands on her hips. ‘Thomas Olsson.’

Jenny had heard his name mentioned before but never met him, a Swedish cop friend of Dorothy’s. The Skelfs had buried his wife, and Indy said he was a bit of a silver fox.

‘You’re off to meet a handsome widower the day after cremating your husband?’

Dorothy raised her eyebrows at Jenny’s tone. ‘I can do whatever I want.’

‘Just like you did in eighty-seven.’

Dorothy froze. Eighty-seven was shorthand for what came to be regarded within the family as ‘Dorothy’s episode’. A solo trip to visit her mum in Pismo Beach, supposedly for two weeks, turned into almost two months. Jim and a hormonal Jenny were 29left in Scotland wondering what the hell was going on. Turned out Dorothy was hooking up with an old school flame, recently divorced, the pair of them trying to grab on to their disappearing youth one last time. In the end, Jim had to fly to California to talk Dorothy into coming back. Jenny never really understood how, but her mum and dad managed to put it behind them. Jim forgave Dorothy and she was clearly full of remorse, but Jenny never properly got over it. A germ of an idea about the possibility of betrayal and deceit sprouted in her mind, then years later, when Hannah was almost the same age as she had been, Craig went and did the same thing, only much worse. That reopened the wound, made it hard to accept her mum’s comfort and support through her own separation and divorce. And now this, Jim’s burnt remains downstairs on a slab, and Dorothy dressed nice and heading out to meet an eligible widower.

‘Don’t you dare,’ Dorothy said. ‘You have no right to bring that up.’

‘Whatever you say.’

‘Your dad was the love of my life. What happened back then was a mistake, one I’ve always regretted. And to bring it up now, my God.’

Jenny held out her hands. ‘OK.’

‘I don’t need permission to live.’

‘Fine.’

The coffee pot burbled on the stove as Schrödinger wandered over to Dorothy and ran his tail round her legs. She stroked him and pointed at the doorway.

‘I need you to cover the front desk for a while,’ she said. ‘It’s Indy’s day off.’