‘Of course! I need you to help, Molly, just as long as you do what I want you to. It’ll be my turn to be bossy.’ Thea sipped her coffee to hide her amusement at this notion. She could no more boss Molly than Molly could go to bed without flossing her teeth or applying expensive cream, with light, upward strokes, into her neck.

They were a good team. Thea signed papers and Molly signed cheques, and between them they put the fear of God into all the official bodies they had to deal with before Thea was given two sets of keys to what would be the gallery. She gave one to Molly as they drank a celebratory cup of coffee and Thea ate a celebratory cream cake. ‘You’ll need these. I’m planning to organise the lodgers to come in and help me clean and decorate. I’ll have to pay them, of course. I’m not sure if Petal will do it, though. Unlike the others, she doesn’t need the money.’

‘Get her to organise the others. The way to deal with bossy people,’ said Molly, looking directly at Thea, but not changing her expression, ‘is to channel their bossiness. Derek told me that.’

Thea had never really got to know Derek. She tended to do things with Molly on her own. Now, she liked Derek better the more she learned about him and mentally filed him away as a source of advice.

Later, she rang Rory and told him the good news. He was worryingly ambivalent. ‘Rory, you’re not going to let me do all this gallery thing, borrow hundreds – no, thousands – of pounds from Molly, and then just send your stuff to the States anyway?’

‘Now, would I do a thing like that?’

His charm was less potent down the phone, but still evident. ‘I do hope not, Rory, or I might have to firebomb your studio or something,’ said Thea mildly. ‘No one cares about your work as much as I do, except perhaps Ben. I’m busting all my guts, everything, to give you a completely fabulous space to show it in. I can’t have you backing out now.’

‘Now don’t you go getting your knickers in a twist.’ Thea winced at her least favourite expression. ‘I’ll let you have the first showing of my work, provided you’ve got space for it all.’

A finger of anxiety touched Thea for a moment, but she dismissed it. When Rory saw the gallery he wouldn’t want his work shown anywhere else.

Molly was quite right about Petal. Once she was convinced that it was the right and cool thing to do (helped in her decision by her new boyfriend who, unusually for Petal, was hard up) she galvanised the troops wonderfully, making those without Saturday jobs give up their free day to Thea.