‘Rory says he’s got lots of drawings and a few water-colours too. Sketches, mainly. Ben thinks he should get those framed, because at least they’re not ten foot square and they might sell.’

‘I always like drawings myself,’ said Thea, who really yearned for one of the paintings, a wall of coloured light, only she didn’t have a wall big enough. ‘What do you think of them, Petal?’

‘Amazing! They sort of blast you with colour and light, don’t they?’ Petal rubbed her arms, chilly in her sleeveless fleece. ‘I’m cold. I think I’ll go back to the house.’

‘You could do the drying up while you’re there.’ Thea, in Rory’s coat, wanted to go on gazing at the pictures.

Petal made a face.

‘Go on,’ Thea urged. ‘It won’t take you a minute, and it’ll –’

‘It won’t look good on my CV, Thea, if that’s what you were going to say.’

Thea was in the habit of encouraging her lodgers to get jobs, even if their parents gave them huge allowances, because ‘it would look good on their CVs’.

‘I was going to say it’ll earn you Brownie points with Molly and Ben.’

‘Ben’s all right, actually, isn’t he? I’ve never really got to know him before. I was so embarrassed when Mum said he’d offered to collect my work.’

‘So you’ve dropped the “uncle” bit?’

‘Yeah. He said he wasn’t my uncle and he’d prefer to be just Ben. Molly was a bit shocked.’

‘But you’re not calling Molly, Molly?’

Petal shook her head. ‘Nah. She’d freak.’ Petal sighed. ‘I’ll go and dry up, then.’

‘Thank you, Petal. You’re a good girl.’

Warmed by the beauty of the paintings, more than the weak sunshine, Thea suddenly felt very fond of Petal.

Thea had stopped gazing at the work and was lying back on the scrub with her eyes shut. The sun had emerged from its cloudy veil and was now quite hot on her face. She was nearly asleep when Ben joined her. She sat up and tried to look intelligent.

‘Well, they are good, that’s for sure.’

‘And you agree with me that they should be exhibited?’

‘Yes, but where? I do have contacts in some London galleries, but they’re all booked up for years ahead. He says he won’t wait, but will ship them off to America. The gallery owner he first showed with has a gallery in New York and might well be keen to show him again, particularly now he’s matured a bit.’

‘But how will he afford to do that? He was telling me that even the cost of paint is crippling. He’d have to paint horses and dogs for years to afford to get them to America.’

‘Not if he sent slides to the right people. Someone would pay for them to go.’