The book told her that pups of three weeks should be started on solid food. Well, it was already too late for that. They should be fed in separate bowls to make sure they all got equal shares and they would need at least three meals a day. They would also have to be helped to eat. Thea saw herself spoon-feeding each pup, saying ‘one for mummy’ and playing aeroplanes. It would take hours out of her already completely full days. She put a jug of milk in the microwave, having not bought a proprietary puppy milk, hoping it wouldn’t give them the threatened diarrhoea.

‘If I’d wanted to become a dog breeder,’ she growled to the absent Rory, when she’d finally got the cornflakes (all the cereal she had in the cupboard) to the right temperature, ‘I wouldn’t have chosen to do it while I was opening an art gallery. I’d have done it when I had absolutely nothing to do with my life except lie on my stomach and dabble my fingers in warm breakfast cereal.’

This sarcasm followed the many other curses she had sent to him over the ether. She cursed as she bought boxes of Weetabix and tins of puppy food, a proper water bowl and a set of new cereal bowls. Only at the last minute did she relent and let the lodgers have the new bowls, and use the old ones for the pups.

The lodgers were mostly delighted with Lara and the pups, even though it was only Thea who would clear up after her in the garden. Molly was very ambivalent. When Thea explained that she would have to take Lara and the pups to the gallery, if there was no one at home to give Lara her huge meals and the pups their little ones, she bit her lip. ‘It’s not that I don’t love Lara’ – she patted the huge head with some distaste – ‘but an art gallery is no place for animals.’

‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ Thea snapped, and then smiled to neutralise her irritation. ‘But what can I do? Besides, if I did ever feel like sleeping over at the gallery, Lara would be company.’

Molly didn’t approve of the notion of Thea sleeping at the gallery and so far the lure of hot water had always prevented Thea from doing it. But she could see that the drive home after a long day would seem like a dreadful slog, particularly in Thea’s little car.

‘I suppose so. And the pups are rather sweet.’ One of them was chewing ineffectually at the toe of Molly’s shoe.