‘Are we all here?’ Catherine Chambers from the Citizens Advice was minuting the meeting. She was wearing the exhausted expression of a woman who’d already spent a long day untangling problems. ‘Can we crack on?’

The chairs, arranged in a UN-style horseshoe, were full apart from one seat, next to Tara.

‘Diane said she’d be late but to start without her,’ said a woman from the council. ‘Food bank emergency.’

‘We’ll make a start,’ Catherine decided. ‘There’s a lot to get through.’

And there was. Thirty-two people from Watling Avenue were still in temporary accommodation, unable to get back into their houses because of structural damage; the council was taking longer than hoped to get the debris cleared from several streets; there were no skips left in the whole county. Potholes, overflowing drains, abandoned dogs, subsidence in the graveyard: the list went on. Not much of it was quickly fixed.

‘Tara, I’ve got more requests for counselling, I’m afraid.’ Catherine passed her a list of names. ‘We’ve had a rush in the last few days. You did warn us this might happen, once people got over the initial shock.’

‘The second wave, as it were.’ The bearded police liaison officer whose name Tara could never remember grinned, pleased with himself, and Catherine tutted half-heartedly.

‘I’ll see what I can do.’ She ran her eye down the dozens of names and contact details and wondered how on earth she was going to fit these people into her diary. Time to appeal to the other counsellors at the Centre to volunteer a couple of sessions a week. Maybe the angels could turn the standing water on Watling Avenue into disinfectant. Or gin.

‘Anyone else got something to share?’ Catherine looked around the chairs. ‘Something positive would be nice,’ she added plaintively. ‘Before we get on to the financial stuff. Which is – spoiler alert – not good news.’

‘Well, yes. Actually I’ve got some very good news to share with you.’ Alice Roberts, the parish council representative, shuffled her papers and turned pink.

‘Jolly good. We’re all ears.’

‘Troutbridge Memorial Hall,’ she began, and immediately there was a sympathetic groan around the room.