She turned on the taps and went to hunt for a towel in the walk-in airing cupboard. She wanted to find a non-B & B towel so her mother wouldn’t have to wash it immediately when something right at the back on the bottom shelf drew her attention. It was a Harrods carrier bag and seeing it brought back a flood of memories. She pulled it out and saw that yes, it did still contain what she thought it did. Several old fleeces, dyed in eye-popping colours, rolled together in a felted mass. She’d forgotten about them but now she remembered the day she’d dyed them, thinking she was going to spin and then weave them. And here they were, in her mother’s airing cupboard, as vibrant as they were when they went in.

She got in the bath and lay there, as always her thoughts becoming more creative as the hot water did its work. She thought of her mother’s cake – in theory it was a crazy idea but actually, it was lovely. Why didn’t she make a wall hanging of a landscape from above? She could use the fleece. She could do another as a cross section of a piece of land, like a piece of cake. (She realised it had been ages since she’d had a good bit of cake!) And the cross section, starting from the bottom up, could show all the strata and layers of the earth ending with a hedge and possibly sky and clouds as the top layer. Once she’d worked out a pattern it should be quick to do. Fleece was lovely and fat! It would take up lots of space.

When she went downstairs later wearing her mother’s dressing gown and smelling of her bath products she was excited.

The kitchen was no longer taken up by cake and a sulky Ulysses now sat in front of the range cooker, the end of his tail flicking with resentment.

‘Mum – I’ve had a brilliant idea! I want to borrow your idea of a landscape from above. Wouldn’t it be a wonderful wall hanging? And then I thought I’d do a cross section of the earth too. Just a slice, obviously. Once I’ve worked out what I need to do it’ll be quite quick to make, I think.’

‘Oh?’ Gilly held the bread knife over the loaf, waiting for Helena to explain further.

‘I found that bag of fleeces I dyed when I was in college. They were in the airing cupboard. Not only are they amazingly bright colours, fleece is really fat—’

‘—and so will take up lots of lovely space? Darling, it sounds brilliant. Now, omelette coming up. Why don’t you stay the night and then you can have wine with it.’