‘We enjoyed it too, didn’t we?’ Tara lifted the tray with its covert cargo; it sounded as if Dad wanted to talk, properly, in which case she definitely didn’t want some random woman distracting them with phone calls. ‘Can I get anyone anything from the kitchen?’

When she came back, Keith and Toby were reminiscing about Branston.

‘Toby was just saying how much like Branston Lloyd is,’ said Keith, indicating the seat where Molly had been sitting, the one next to him. ‘What a prince among dogs.’

‘My best friend.’ She slid in next to him, keen to forgive. ‘There could never be another Branny. I’d have done anything for that good boy.’

‘What? You are such a rewriter of history, Tara.’

Toby’s voice had a slurry edge. Tara didn’t like the sound of it.

‘Meaning?’

‘Well, when you say you’d have done anything for him … are you forgetting the time you nearly got him killed? On purpose?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘Come on. We can laugh about it now.’

‘I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about, Toby.’

Toby looked between Keith and Tara. ‘You’ve never heard this story, Dad? About Tara’s big scheme to get you to come home?’

‘Toby, you’re pissed,’ she said shortly. He’d always been a bit of a fabricator, adding funny twists to stories to make them more entertaining. Not lying, exactly. But not quite the truth. ‘I would never do anything to harm Branny.’

‘You did!’ He pointed at her. ‘It was about six months after Dad left, so … April? You knew that Branston was pining for Dad, and you knew that if we ever left that gate open in the back garden he’d have a wander off, see if he could find any girls in the area. So, your little brain got whirring …’

Something dark stirred in the back of Tara’s mind, a half-remembered dream with no faces or places, just an unspecific dread looming larger and larger behind her.

‘And one day you came running into the kitchen, going “Mum, Mum, I can’t find Branston! I think he’s run away.”’ His impression of her voice was accurate but not very kind. ‘And of course Mum was busy, in the middle of something more important, as usual, and she said, “Oh, he’ll come back.” But he didn’t, did he?’

Why was Toby making up such a horrible story? ‘Dad, make him stop.’

‘You were all, “We should call Dad, we should tell him Branston’s run away,” but then we got a phone call from a complete stranger saying they were very sorry but they’d just run over a dog—’

‘Shut up, Toby!’