Tara struggled. He’d rung Toby out of the blue? How had he even got his number? From his agent, maybe. It wasn’t as if Toby was hard to get hold of, unless you were his sister. She squeezed the bridge of her nose with her free hand. ‘Dad is the last person Mum would want going through the house.’

‘I know that. But you said you needed some help.’

From YOU, she wanted to say. I wanted YOU to come back and help me deal with the emotional furniture in this place, not the actual sofas and beds. ‘Why didn’t you ask me first? Why didn’t you warn me?’

‘Well, naturally, I assumed he’d ring you beforehand, not pitch up on the doorstep.’

Tara glanced towards the downstairs bathroom, and saw Sybil staring witheringly at her in the hallway. She turned back, jangling with panic. She felt small again, when Toby had been by her side, muttering his mysteriously accurate commentary on adult behaviour into her baffled ear. ‘Why is he here, Toby? Really?’

‘Maybe he’s seen God and wants to make amends for walking out on us?’ Toby’s tone was annoyingly reasonable. ‘Maybe Mum dying’s triggered a mid-life crisis. Maybe he left a buried treasure map in the airing cupboard.’

The toilet flushed. She didn’t have much time.

‘Look, I’ve got to go – he’s coming out of the loo.’

‘Say hi from me,’ said Toby. ‘Actually, no. Don’t do that. But call me back, let me know what’s going on.’

‘I will, because there’s something important we still need to talk about …’ said Tara, but he’d gone. She shoved the phone into her back pocket as Keith emerged into the hall.

‘I see your mother decided to remodel the wet room.’ Keith gesticulated behind him. They’d had the first walk-in wet room in the area, years ahead of everyone else; Tara had always assumed it was a bathroom for the dog. ‘Very Moroccan now.’

‘Er, yes.’ Tara hadn’t been there when Mum had done that. She’d had a builder called Lorcan who she relied on for her regular renovations, working her way around the house season by season. ‘She went on holiday, got into tiles.’

‘And … oh.’ He stopped short of the marble kitchen counter and gazed about the place like someone in an art gallery, stumbling across a Picasso. ‘Oh, wow.’ Tara’s hands clenched and unclenched by her sides. Was he seeing the glass-chinking, laughter-buzzy parties? The family dinners at the breakfast bar? Was he seeing her memories, or just his own handiwork?

‘Still an incredible space,’ he said, gazing up at the glass extension, angling his hand against the fading light to see how it fell. ‘And the colours work so well. Your mother always had a great eye for design. She could have been a world-class interior designer.’