Petal came back just as Thea had levered the completed dish into the oven. Preceded by a large number of plastic sacks, Petal said, ‘You really should clear out the attic, Thea. I can’t believe you’ve got so many cardboard boxes. What on earth have you got in them?’

In fact, they were full of Thea’s photographs and negatives, carefully indexed and catalogued, from when she was a student to the moment she gave up professional photography. But she had no intention of telling Petal that. ‘The attic’s probably a lot clearer now you’ve taken your work out of it, Petal,’ she said, mentally trying to locate the corkscrew.

In a minute Petal and her uncle would go away, and she could open the bottle of red wine which was hidden behind the bleach in the cupboard under the sink, the one place her lodgers would never look, however desperate for a drink they were. She wouldn’t offer any to Molly when she appeared. Molly was of the ‘life’s too short to drink cheap wine’ school of thought. Thea felt that life was too long not to.

Petal, oblivious to the acid in Thea’s tone, looked anxiously about the kitchen. ‘Don’t you think you should tidy up a bit, if Aunt Molly’s coming?’

Thea would have liked to commit murder, but thought she’d better not. It would only add to the mess. ‘I’m in the middle of cooking a meal, Petal. And I take it you’re not eating with us?’

‘Oh, no! Didn’t I say? Sorry.’

At that moment the doorbell rang. ‘Answer it, will you?’ Thea implored.

‘But it’ll be Aunt Molly, for you.’ Petal was surprised Thea could ask such a thing of her. ‘I’m really busy.’

‘So am I!’ said Thea who was swooping round the worktops with a cloth.

‘I’ll get it,’ Ben offered.

This was kind and, if he wanted to be even kinder, he would involve Molly in a lot of time-consuming chat upstairs in the hall, giving Thea valuable extra seconds to clean up.

Molly, whom she had met on her first day in Cheltenham, had been introduced by some distant relative of Thea’s mother’s. It was a very tenuous connection but Molly, who could be very kind, had followed it up immediately by inviting Thea for coffee. Thea, delighted to get away from the removal men, walked round in her old jeans and torn shirt. Molly, as always, was immaculately groomed and dressed, and had given her sherry, not coffee. She assumed that Thea’s dishabille, meant that she was ‘arty’ and had taken her under her wing. In the two and a half years that Thea had lived in Cheltenham the two women had spent quite a lot of time together. Now she entered Thea’s kitchen, all benevolence, a good five minutes after she had rung the doorbell.