‘I know. Don’t worry, it’s a mistake anyone could make.’ She smiled to hide her hurt. All cats are grey in the dark; it’s easy to mistake good old Thea for someone you really fancy when you’re asleep. ‘I’m going to put another coat on,’ she went on. ‘You stay here. If you’re still sleepy you might as well sleep.’

‘OK.’

Thea crawled back upstairs, wanting to cry, she felt so pathetic. Rejected by Ben and now doing the floor all by herself. It would take for ever and it would be no fun.

She’d just realised how like Petal she was sounding in her thoughts when he joined her. ‘I couldn’t go back to sleep after all. Where’s my roller?’

They didn’t go back to bed again. They just worked through. They had four coats of varnish on by morning and Thea felt exhausted, more from the awkwardness between them than from the work and lack of sleep.

‘So, shall we load up Lara and the puppies now?’ he asked. He’d already walked her round the waste ground and between them they’d watched the puppies have their breakfast.

It was still early. Thea’s ankle was hurting, although not as much, and she badly wanted to be at home. On the other hand, because she was tired, and despondent and irrational, she didn’t want Ben driving her. She didn’t want him forced into helping her up the stairs, into the bath, or whatever. It would be so intimate and yet so detached.

‘Actually, Ben, I’ve got one or two things to do in town. I might as well do them while I’m over here. I’ll give Molly a ring later.’ She glanced at her watch. It was still only seven o’clock. ‘She’ll come and give me a hand, if I find I can’t drive. If you go now, you’ll be in London before the worst of the traffic’

He looked at his watch. ‘Hardly. I might as well stay and see that you’re all right.’

‘I am all right.’ She forced a smile to reinforce her words.

‘I’m not happy about leaving you here like this.’

‘You don’t have to be happy about it. Just do it. I’ll be fine. Really I will.’ A whole lot more fine than if you stay looking down at me like that, as if I were a delinquent schoolgirl.

She resolved that she was definitely going to wean herself off Ben. It was just no good loving a man like him when you had morals. She could have let him carry on what he’d started when he’d been three-quarters asleep. Many a good man had been trapped by more devious means. But unless he wanted her while he was wide awake and conscious, he couldn’t have her at all.