‘Right. Mojito time! With actual mint from Mum’s herb patch. I thought we’d have fajitas for dinner. I’ve prepared the veg and salad. I thought you wouldn’t want to cook after a day at Stargazey.’ She glanced at Sam. ‘Everything OK?’

Sam prevented Gareth from escaping down her legs and under Zennor’s feet. ‘Yeah. How about you?’

Zennor put the glasses on the coffee table. She flopped down onto the sofa beside Sam, sipped her mojito and let out a deep sigh.

‘What a day I’ve had. Our biggest client keeps changing their mind over their new corporate logo. Fifteen times we’ve reworked the bloody thing and the MD has finally deigned to look at the designs and wants us to revisit the original one.’ She sipped again as Sam listened, trying to focus on Zennor’s brain dump. ‘Then the wifi packed up for three hours – three whole sodding hours – just when we needed to test out the garden centre website we’ve been working on like for evah. And when I called the bank to sort out the charges on our account, the fuckwit at the call centre asked me to spell my name four times and asked me if I was named after a laxative? I have no idea what he meant but personally, I thought it was as funny as stepping in dog poo.’

‘So rude,’ said Sam, echoing one of Zennor’s favourite phrases while putting off the news about Gabe’s return as festival headliner. Gareth was squirming on the pillow, clearly ready to join Harry for a bit of a kickabout on the carpet, so she gently returned him to the field of play where the pigs started nudging a ball around.

Zennor sipped her drink again and leaned back against the couch. ‘Why can’t I be called something simple and normal like Emma or Kelly? It would be so much easier.’

‘At least you were named after a beautiful mermaid,’ said Sam. ‘Mum called me after a plant. I mean – have you ever met another Samphire?’

‘No, but you do go so beautifully with a nice piece of fish.’

Sam laughed. ‘I suppose we should be grateful that Mum had a good imagination. She was never conventional. She said Dad wasn’t either, which might be why he ran off with that exotic dancer.’ Sam couldn’t remember much about her father although looking back on her mum’s old photos of him, she supposed he was handsome in a nineteen-eighties big hair and moustache kind of way. None of the Lovells had any contact with him whatsoever and Sam was content to leave things that way.