Toby responded eventually, by text, and his advice was short, to the point, and exactly as Tara expected: You need to talk this through with someone who doesn’t know any of us.

The trouble was, Tara didn’t want to.

She should, in principle, have taken this work-affecting crisis to her own supervisor, Eric – a softly spoken truth machine who enquired remorselessly about her self-care and asked the type of probing questions that Tara didn’t feel up to answering right now. Starting with, was she up to date with her own therapy? So she opted for the less stressful approach of lunch with her best work friend, Emily. Emily was the Centre’s family specialist, although Tara had spotted not one but two of Emily’s clients sidling into David’s room, Cockapoo in tow.

‘Em, can I get your take on something professionally?’ she floated casually, after they’d discussed the likely fallout of the upcoming Summer Party over their soup, and skirted around the issue of exactly what David was doing to get everyone eating out of his hand so soon and with so little contribution to the cake rota.

‘Sure!’ said Emily, scanning the menu in the cafe for a pudding. ‘Don’t tell me – you want to start bringing a horse into sessions? Or making everyone sing their presenting issue as if they’re in a musical?’

‘No, it’s a family thing, not really my area of expertise. What’s the best way to handle contact from an estranged parent?’

Emily looked up. ‘Adult or child? How long an estrangement?’

‘An adult, parent walked out when they were ten. Messy divorce.’

‘Uh-huh. And no contact in that time?’

‘Sporadic up to university, since then a few phone calls. Nothing significant. It’s someone I’ve been helping down at the crisis centre,’ she added quickly. ‘Her dad heard about the floods on the news; now he’s got in touch. She’s not sure what to do.’

Which was accurate enough.

Why don’t you just tell Emily the truth? Tara asked herself, but the embarrassment scorching through her was enough of an answer. She maintained strict work/home boundaries for this very reason. Work Tara was a friendly professional, with an out-of-focus home life that had only come into focus when her mum died. It wouldn’t make her look particularly good as a counsellor, Tara felt, if it emerged she hadn’t spoken to her dad in years and had never questioned her mum’s obsessive collecting of Sindy dolls. Not to mention her own broken engagement and the Phil Shawcross situation. When it came to rocky relationships, the Centre team were all marriage guidance counsellors, even Harry the sports masseur. It had been worth swapping her engagement ring to the other finger each morning and sacrificing the whip-round toaster not to have suffered the collective sympathy when she and Justin split up.