‘I’m clearing out my mum’s house. She had an interiors business.’ Two hours Tara had spent ‘sorting’ the previous night, and she’d barely emptied one tightly packed cupboard of pillow cases, duvet covers, linen and 800-thread-count cotton. It was the fourth cupboard she’d tackled, and still she’d found almost nothing personal. No photos, no school reports, no hoarded hand-scribbled cards or tiny stuffed school-trip teddy bears. Twenty scented candles, though. Tara wondered if she should have donated them too, to help with the smell, or if it would come across as flippant.

‘This is amazing, thank you.’ Sonia hugged the bag to her chest. ‘You didn’t get any flooding up your way, then?’

‘No, we’re on a hill. Didn’t reach us.’

‘Lucky you.’

Tara nodded. Lucky her.

She checked her phone as soon as Sonia had left, but didn’t recognize the missed-call number. That didn’t mean it wasn’t Phil, of course. He frequently rang from numbers she didn’t recognize; ‘I’m on the office mobile,’ he’d say airily by way of explanation.

There was no message. Was it Dad? Should she phone him back, just in case?

Tara put her phone down, then picked it up again. Then put it down. What did he want? What would she say? What would he say? She needed to be in a calm space, when she’d had time to plan her responses, so they were dignified and memorable. Ideally when she knew what he was going to say.

An embarrassingly loud rumble broke her train of thought, and she checked her watch. It was ten past three. She’d worked through her lunch break, and the sandwiches she’d packed for lunch had been eaten long before her second client arrived at half past ten.

Food first, she decided, and headed down to the kitchen to forage for snacks. It was Harry’s turn to provide the Cake of the Week, and thanks to the note propped up next to it, inviting colleagues to guess the ‘surprise mystery ingredient!’, there hadn’t been any takers so far. Cake of the Week was a popular tradition in the Wellness Centre, especially since the vegans and sugar-refusers felt they had something to prove to the chocolate-addicted. Most cakes didn’t last beyond the first socially acceptable coffee break of the day; if it got to three and no one had braved the first slice, Jacqueline snuck in, cut a piece and carried it away at arm’s length, to spare everyone’s feelings.

This would have to do, thought Tara, eyeing Harry’s oily green icing with some suspicion, and cut into it with the big knife.

As she was psyching herself up to swallow the first lumpy forkful (cornflour? Courgettes? Piccalilli?), her phone rang, and automatically, rather than eat the cake, she put down the fork and answered the phone instead.