She struggled hard with her conscience. It had to be a clean break, she told herself. She couldn’t give Phil a reason to phone for check-ins. More to the point, she couldn’t give herself a reason to keep in touch.

Sybil’s last supper at Tara’s house was luxurious – a whole tin of pilchards and half a pack of Dreamies – though, typically, she’d shown no sign of gratitude. When she’d stalked on to Tara’s best cashmere cardigan at bedtime, Tara hadn’t chucked her off as she usually did, and Sybil reciprocated by decamping to the bed in the middle of the night, waking her up with some loud purring and spiky kneading, perilously close to her ear.

I’ll miss this, Tara realized, lying very still to avoid being clawed in the head, as the morning light filtered through the curtains. Then she blanked her mind to everything but Sybil’s throaty purrs, just in case Sybil was picking up her guilty, sad thoughts.

Tara wasn’t the only one up and about early on Saturday morning. As she was fastening Sybil’s carrier properly on to the back seat of her car, Keith appeared, a vision of summeriness in an open-neck shirt, sunglasses dangling from his top pocket.

‘Good morning! Where are you off to?’ Keith beeped open his Mercedes, then frowned, seeing Sybil’s basket. ‘Not the vet’s, I hope? Everything OK with my furry friend?’

The speed with which Sybil had taken to Keith was outrageous. ‘She’s fine.’

‘Good!’

Keith seemed to be waiting for an answer and Tara didn’t really want to give him one, so she smiled as if she had, and headed back into the house.

She took a little longer than she needed to, wiping breakfast crumbs off the counter top, filling the dishwasher with wobbly hands, and when she returned the Mercedes was still there, but there was no sign of her dad.

Tara slid into the driving seat and put on her shades. She didn’t want to discuss today’s mission with him. She didn’t even want to think about it until she was there and it was happening, as there was every chance she’d bottle it.

‘Come on, Tara, you can do this,’ she said aloud. She plugged in her phone, already tuned to a motivational playlist of break-up songs, and turned the key in the ignition.

Nothing happened.

She turned it again, and this time heard a faint clicking, then nothing.

‘Damn.’ Tara squeezed her eyes shut. The protective layer of patience between her outer calm and the churning lava of nerves inside her was very thin right now. Very thin.

There was a brisk knock on the window.

Keith was crouching by the side of the car, making a ‘wind it down’ gesture.

Tara tried but nothing happened. Because – as she now realized – the Mini’s battery was flat.

How symbolic, she thought.