Longhampton Wellness Centre was located opposite the town hall in a grand Georgian building that had once accommodated the Farmers’ Union. The county’s farmers and landowners would gather on market days in the oak-panelled bar of Pomona House to sink ale and peel notes off fist-sized rolls of cash, while their wives – if invited – sat in the upstairs ladies’ parlour with their handbags on their knees, safely out of earshot. Although the building had been sold several times since its heyday, once to a wine merchant, more than once to short-lived restaurants, an agricultural atmosphere lingered in the decor. Carved sheaves of wheat ran up the staircases and a life-sized plaster bull’s head presided over the reception desk with a glassy-eyed gaze. Tara had asked to swap to her current consulting room, ostensibly because it had an original sash window and a view of the cathedral spire, but really because she found the moulded bunches of apples on the ceiling significantly more soothing than the anxious lambs peering down at her clients in the first.

The spacious upstairs kitchen – where grand Farmers’ Union feasts were once prepared – was now the therapists’ hang-out between appointments, where they’d make coffee and offer each other advice on container gardening, aura cleansing and the like. Tara had hidden a kettle in her desk so she wouldn’t have to hear quite so much about aura cleansing, but washing the cups was an unavoidable part of the day and she tended to leave it until the very last moment, or lunchtime, when the holistic therapists went to the park to do tai chi and affirm each other.

Tara had been scheduling evening appointments in an attempt to get through her backlog, but tonight she’d made sure her last appointment finished on the dot of five. She was running on the last fumes from the emergency chocolate in her drawer, and the mental picture of a long bath and her pyjamas had been keeping her going since lunch.

As she dragged herself round her consulting room, gathering up used crockery, there was a brisk knock on her door and Jacqueline’s head appeared. ‘Are you off?’

Tara raised her mugs. ‘Just got to wash these up then I’m heading home. Been a long day!’

She hoped Jacqueline wasn’t going to choose this moment for one of her in-person catch-ups. Tara was Jacqueline’s unofficial deputy, and nice as it was to be trusted with her dilemmas, Jacqueline prided herself on her ‘360-degree consideration’ of issues and right now, after weeks of homeless children and drowned guinea pigs, Tara didn’t have much bandwidth left for ethical handwash policies.

‘Good-o!’ Jacqueline seemed too smiley. ‘I’ll pop along with you.’

‘OK,’ said Tara dubiously.

But as they turned the corner and she saw the crowd in the kitchen, the penny dropped.