Thea thought that while Rory might be prepared to wait a few days to get her into bed, it was unlikely he’d be willing to wait a few years for an exhibition, not when he’d just broken out of his artistic purdah.

‘I’m sorry the chops are a bit overdone.’

‘They’re fine. I eat a lot of crispy chops. The phone always rings when I’m cooking.’

‘It’s funny, that, isn’t it? You’d think they’d tell people selling fitted kitchens that people aren’t receptive when their unfitted one is in chaos and they’re trying to get a meal on the table.’

‘So you use your candle and smoke alarm trick, do you?’

She looked bemused for a moment. ‘Now, how do you know – oh, yes, you were there when I did it the other day.’ She smiled. ‘No, I find it far easier to get rid of cold callers, I just say “no thank you” and put the phone down.’

‘You cook for your lodgers, do you?’

‘For my sins, and only in the evening, and not if they tell me they’re going to be out. Just like a family with rather a lot of teenagers in it, really.’

‘It must be quite tough, taking on teenagers when you haven’t had children of your own.’

She shrugged. The fact that she hadn’t had babies was something of a sadness for Thea. When she was younger she’d felt you couldn’t mix dashing all over the country being a photojournalist with small children, unless you had a really supportive partner. None of the men she knocked around with were partner material. Conrad, she had thought, was the exception, but even before his massive betrayal she had known he wasn’t cut out for fatherhood. Now that she had retired from the lists of cut-throat journalism, she was beginning to worry about being too old and had no partner at all, suitable or otherwise.

‘These knives are hopeless,’ she said a moment after she had shot peas across the table on to Ben’s plate. ‘I’ll go and see if I can find something a bit sharper in the kitchen.’

Ben put a hand on hers as she stood up. ‘Don’t worry about it. You probably won’t find anything and we can use our fingers.’

Thea sat back in her chair, tiredness wafting over her unexpectedly. ‘OK. You must be shattered. Did you drive all the way?’

Ben, who had picked up his chop, shook his head. ‘Molly drove too. Fortunately she’s a good driver.’

‘Why didn’t you fly from Stansted to Knock airport, like I did? You could have hired a car.’

‘We didn’t know about Knock airport. Besides, it would have been much more expensive with so many of us.’

‘I didn’t think Molly worried about things like expense.’

‘She doesn’t, but I do.’