Tara fiddled with the stem of the glass. Now they were on their own, she wanted to tell him the good news about Sybil but that would mean telling him about finishing with Phil, and somehow that made her feel strange. Even thinking about Phil curdled her mood; now the grief had worn off, an unexpected anger had revealed itself underneath.

‘Good news on Mrs Murray,’ David told her, turning the bottle upside down in the cooler. ‘Simba came home last night. Bit of his ear missing but otherwise none the worse for his two weeks in the wild. She brought him in to say hello!’

‘Hooray!’ The thought of Sybil going missing now filled Tara with real panic. ‘They’ve no idea where he’s been? What he’s been up to?’

David tapped his nose. ‘What happens in Much Larton stays in Much Larton.’

‘And what about Mrs Cartwright? Has little Bobby turned up yet?’

‘No, sadly. I think we’re turning a corner, though, in terms of her general outlook. She’s coming along to the next craft drop-in – she’s going to be a crochet coach.’

‘Poor Mrs Cartwright.’ Tara had only seen Joan twice before David had taken over her counselling but she already felt as if she knew Bobby, his likes and particularly dislikes, which were legion. He’d been Mrs Cartwright’s sole companion for eight years. ‘It must be heartbreaking for her, not knowing whether he’s alive or dead. He had his own china plate, you know.’

‘Cats usually find someone to feed them,’ said David. ‘And they can always hunt.’

‘Not Bobby. He can tell the difference between Waitrose and Tesco own-brand cat food.’

A thought occurred to Tara. It went against her position of polite neutrality on the topic of David’s ‘gift’ but she felt she owed it to Mrs Cartwright to ask. ‘David, when you do this communication … do you have to have the animal physically in front of you to talk to it?’

He gave her a wary look. ‘Is there an answer that will sound more crazy or less crazy, in your opinion?’

‘I think we passed that point some time ago.’

He sipped his wine. ‘Then, no. I don’t have to have the animal in front of me. I can just tune into them. It’s an energy exchange, like telepathy – distance isn’t an issue.’

‘OK, well in that case, why don’t you just ask Bobby where—?’

Before she could even finish her sentence, David was shaking his head emphatically. ‘No. No, that’s not something I do, sorry.’

‘How do you know what I was going to say?’

‘Lost pets. And no. Sorry.’