Oli turned to his wife. ‘I’m bewildered! What’s been going on?’

Slowly, having to sniff quite hard at times, Kaz explained. ‘Clancy offered to invest in the B&B. But then Genevieve made it sound as if Clancy was really bad news so … I told her we didn’t want to go ahead.’ Then she looked at Clancy and choked, ‘I’m so sorry.’

Oli shoved back his thinning hair. ‘You turned down an investor without consulting me?’ he thundered.

A tear leaked from the corner of Kaz’s eye. ‘I realised after that I should have asked Clancy herself about what had happened. But when I went to the Roundhouse the man who answered the door said she’d gone back to London.’

After glaring at his wife for several silent seconds, Oli turned back to Clancy. ‘I don’t suppose you want to pick up the conversation with us again now, do you?’

Clancy rose. ‘I’m not sure,’ she said as kindly as she could, considering. ‘I can’t see it happening now but I am still thinking about what to do next.’ Then, seeing Oli’s shoulders slump in disappointment, she said, ‘I did gather a lot of information about funding, though, so I’ll send that to you.’

After listening to further apologies from Kaz, Clancy returned to the Roundhouse.

Simply ignoring Hugo as she thought about the B&B and wondered whether she should have listened to Oli a little more, she occupied herself with laundry, cleaning down the kitchen and making herself a sandwich.

Some of the shock of what Genevieve, and possibly Alice, had done in putting in a bad word for her with Kaz, wore off as she worked. She paused, sandwich in hand, to realise on a wave of dismay that by reacting as she had, making Aaron leave her alone, she’d actually let Genevieve come between them.

The last thing Clancy cleaned was herself, standing for ages under the hot shower, washing with her favourite jasmine shower gel and wondering why she felt so hoppity-skip about ringing Aaron.

When she’d first seen him at the hospital this morning she’d been so shocked she’d forgotten to kiss him. Was that why he’d been odd all day, looking as if he had things to say but not saying them? Being distracted and absent as they walked around the streets of Chalk Farm?

She dried her hair, then hearing Hugo moving around in his bedroom on the floor below, she took the opportunity to skip downstairs to the landline and dial Aaron’s number, feeling as if her heart was vibrating at the back of her throat.

She got his answering machine. Sod it. She didn’t leave a message because she couldn’t say, ‘I don’t really know what’s happening. But whatever it is, I want to find some way to be with you.’ That wasn’t the sort of thing you said to someone’s machine. You said it when you were face to face with the person and could see their expression and read their reaction in their eyes.