More than once, in the middle of the night, lying in her old room, Tara had wondered if she should make more effort to track her father down, now Mum wasn’t here to be hurt. But even as she was thinking it, Tara could hear Ruth’s voice in her head, reminding her gently not to rely on her dad, hinting at the efforts he could have made for her, but hadn’t. Mum’s own lifelong singleness was an unspoken reminder of how badly he’d broken her trust with his infidelities, his selfish ambitions. In terms of solid things to tether yourself to, Keith Hunter was about as useful as a marshmallow bollard.

Tara gave Toby another five minutes to respond to the photograph, but when he didn’t, she shouldered her bag, gave an unwilling Sybil a kiss goodbye, and left for work.

Tara power-walked into the Wellness Centre in her trainers, after parking her car in a discreet spot in nearby Coleridge Street, to find Jacqueline energetically plumping the rainbow cushions on the foyer chairs. It was the receptionist’s job but Jacqueline was obsessive about first impressions. Deflated cushions, in Jacqueline’s opinion, gave the wrong message to clients. Ditto wilting flowers.

She stopped as soon as Tara came in. ‘Tara! I was hoping to catch you – have you got a moment? In my office?’

‘Of course,’ said Tara, because it wasn’t really a question.

Jacqueline’s was the biggest office upstairs, the one with the three-window panoramic view of the high street and cathedral, as befitted her status as Centre Director. She was the first to admit her skills were more organizational than therapeutic; Jacqueline had retrained as a marriage guidance counsellor after taking early retirement as a primary school headteacher, and was the first point of contact for new clients. She had a habit of referring clients ‘sideways’ if her own brand of therapy (nodding, shortbread, ballroom dancing classes) wasn’t making headway, and ‘sideways’ normally meant ‘to Tara’. But for all her counselling shortcomings, Jacqueline was a very capable manager, always launching initiatives and awareness-raising efforts that kept them in the local paper. Most importantly, no one had her ability to prevent the various factions in the Centre passive-aggressively diagnosing each other to death in the office kitchen.

‘Tara, first things first,’ Jacqueline began, pulling out a purple biro and opening her to-do book, ‘we need to talk about the Summer Party. Can I pop you down for that lovely trifle of yours?’

Tara made a vague noise. The Centre held four seasonal get-togethers, normally good-natured affairs – apart from the Summer Party, which for some reason had a history of getting badly out of hand. Hero and her gang attributed it to the summer solstice.

‘Incidentally, we’ve decided – no party games.’ Jacqueline looked over her spectacles. ‘Not after what happened with the Mr and Mrs quiz last year.’

‘No,’ Tara agreed. ‘Poor Judith.’