‘We’ll charge a fee for showing. Then we can show what we like – what I like. Otherwise we’ll be just another art gallery selling Cotswold views. I don’t want that.’

‘But Thea …!’

‘Molly, you very kindly lent me the money to open. I’m hoping that Rory’s stuff will sell so well and so expensively that we’ll get a huge amount in commission. If we do, I’ll pay as much back to you as possible. If not, when I can arrange a mortgage’ – she should have said, ‘when I can persuade someone to give me a mortgage’ – ‘I’ll pay you back. You’ve been wonderful, Molly. I’ve really enjoyed working with you. But if we want different things for the gallery we’ll have to part.’

Molly absorbed this. She too had really enjoyed being involved. Before her marriage she had worked as a secretary to quite an important businessman when she really ought to have been in business herself. She left her job when she got married and since then her organisational skills had been confined to her husband and her committees. And her desire for adventure had been confined by the limits of Tiger Tours. Since she’d been involved in getting the gallery open, she had really felt fulfilled for the first time in her life. Her problem was going to be the awful rubbish that Thea might consider ‘Art’.

‘Very well,’ she said at last. ‘It’s your gallery, after all. You can put what you want into it, but only if the people who exhibit pay a proper amount and we charge commission. Otherwise you’ll never make more than enough just to cover your overheads. I’ve done some costings.’

Thea laughed. ‘I’m so glad I’ve got you, Molly. I’d be hopeless on my own.’ She had learnt a little about manipulation recently.

She had taken a glass of water upstairs and drank it, examining the task before her. It was impossibly hot. The first week in June had decided to live up to it’s name and be ‘flaming’, purloin all the summer’s heat for itself and discharge it that late afternoon when Thea was planning to work. She had opened the louvred windows in the one pane of glass which had in it anything you could open and she cursed herself for not getting the ventilators working. She had to be content with propping the street door open. At least the varnish was non-toxic.

When she’d given the pups and Lara a meal, and taken Lara to some waste ground for a sniff around, she stripped down to her bra, pants and old painting shirt, which just about covered her pants, and set to work with the roller.