Troutbridge was generally agreed to be the nicest village in the area: one church, four farms, a handful of houses, a pub and a lovely old pre-war hall, used by everyone from NCT mums to spiritualists. Its prime position near the River Martle meant it had been badly affected by the floods, and in the storm that had appeared midway through the rain, as a sort of half-time interlude, an ancient elm had been blown down right on to the Memorial Hall, revealing the oak timbers of the roof like a whale’s skeleton against the sky. Tara had felt particularly sad about it: she’d gone to Brownies there, and Ruth had been a regular at Pilates on the parquet floor. It smelled of institutional sage-green teacups and beeswax polish, dust and raffle tickets. The sort of comfortingly Sunday-teatime smell you couldn’t recreate in a new building.

As Alice said ‘Troutbridge’, a funny feeling stirred in Tara’s stomach.

‘Poor Troutbridge,’ murmured Catherine.

‘I know, I know. Well, it turns out that the Memorial Hall was somewhat … underinsured. Which is a big problem, given the extent of the damage.’

Another glum murmur ran around the table. Under-insurance was something else they knew too much about.

‘I thought you said you had good news!’ joked the bearded policeman. The new vicar – Louise Hopkins – muttered, ‘Give it a rest, Andy,’ and Tara remembered he was called Andy Lewis. His beard was the only memorable thing about him.

‘Well, this afternoon I had a phone call from a construction expert who’s offering to assist with the rebuild!’ Alice looked up, her eyes bright. ‘His company commits to partnering with one community project per year, and he’s offered to come out and assess the whole repair programme, with a view to taking it on.’

Community project. Construction expert. Tara’s throat dried. This had to be Dad. There couldn’t be two architecture firms offering to help.

‘Of course,’ Alice went on, ‘it would mean we’d have to get the necessary permissions moving with the planning department …’ She looked over at Peter Headley, councillor in charge of building control, who opened his mouth to start his usual spiel about the slow-moving cogs of local government but then shut it, seeing the assembled faces glaring as one at him.

‘We’d be mad to put anything in the way of an offer like that.’ Rob Lloyd, the local MP, leaned forward. As local politicians went, he wasn’t too bad; he’d waded through rivers of slurry alongside the rescue teams, even when the camera crews weren’t there. Rob didn’t just talk about doing things, like a lot of people; he did them, even if it meant treading on a few toes in his brand-new Hunter wellies. ‘Applications can always be fast-tracked, if funding’s in place?’

Peter Headley clicked his pen. ‘We’re in uncharted waters, process-wise. Procedure has to be followed but—’