‘Clearly not explicitly enough,’ Em said. Oof, Jack getting the horn. Now she was imagining torturous holiday romances, a Romeo and Juliet between the barn conversions (were there any balconies? She hadn’t spotted any) and fumbly first kisses. She’d have to have a serious chat with him about responsibilities and respect. About not being a git to the opposite sex, like his dad, moreover.

Casanova, still smirking, slid down from his perch and headed for the kitchen, with what looked like a new swagger in his step. ‘Well, this place suddenly got a lot more interesting anyway,’ they heard him drawl, before adding in his normal voice, ‘Hey, Mum, can I open these crisps?’

‘I wish it was just going to be us,’ Izzie said in a quiet voice, before Em could reply to Jack. ‘Here, I mean. I wish the others weren’t coming.’

‘What? Oh!’ Now Em felt a pang of guilt. And surprise too, not least because on their last summer holiday, to Snowdonia, Izzie had barely wanted anything to do with her or Jack. Every time Em had tried to drag her out on a day-trip or off on a walk, she’d resisted, saying she just wanted to stay in the house that day; please, did she have to go? ‘Really? But I thought . . .’

‘I mean, we don’t even know this George bloke. I don’t want to sleep in a strange house with a random man hanging around.’

‘I’m opening the crisps then, I’m taking that as a yes,’ Jack bellowed from the kitchen, but Em was too startled by Izzie’s words to pay him any proper attention.

‘I do know him and he’s not a random man,’ she replied, stung, ‘and he won’t be hanging around, either, he’ll be in with me, so—’

‘Yeah, and I’m not wildly happy about that, either, Mum.’ Izzie pursed her lips, her small pert nose in the air. She wound a thick lock of honey-coloured hair around her hand, then tossed it back over one shoulder. ‘Our rooms are right next to each other and I don’t want to hear anything, all right? It’s disgusting, at your age. It’s kind of desperate, too.’

At her age! Izzie made it sound as if Em was geriatric rather than in the prime of her middle years. That jibe about being desperate hurt too. Hardly! she wanted to cry in nettled self-defence. She had all but given up on men until George had come along and surprised her so delightfully; she had been fully prepared to see out her old age alone, nursing the remaining shreds of her dignity in spinsterly solitude. That was not what a desperate woman looked like, in Em’s opinion.