Thea turned to him, delighted. ‘What a good idea! You are clever. What’s through this way?’

There were two other rooms, also with huge windows and Thea began to feel more and more that this was the right property. ‘Let’s go downstairs,’ she said, when she’d mentally found space for about half of Rory’s huge works.

Downstairs was a basement. There were no windows, no natural light and there was a suspiciously damp smell.

‘It’s the carpet,’ said Ben. ‘If you got it up and let some air get to it, it would probably be fine.’

‘And there are no windows,’ said Thea enthusiastically. ‘We could put paintings on all four walls and prints in the corridor. We’d just need some good lighting. What’s in there?’

There was a little kitchen and another office, again with no windows.

‘This would be good for installations.’ She indicated the office. ‘And the kitchen’s got potential.’

‘As a kitchen,’ said Ben firmly.

‘And an office. I could put a desk in there.’

They stood in the dingy passage. He was looking down at her and, while she couldn’t see his expression, she sensed that he wanted to talk to her, in the way that headmistresses had often wanted to talk to her when she was at school. In other words, what he was going to say was not good news.

‘Thea,’ he began, putting a hand on her arm.

‘Ben,’ she said firmly, taking it off. ‘I think I know what you’re going to say and I think it would be better if you said it somewhere else. Like a pub. There’s one just across the road. I spotted it as we came in.’

‘So,’ she said, having taken a sip of her lager, still resolutely upbeat. ‘You’re going to tell me that I’m mad, that I can’t possibly make an art gallery work without a private income and that I should just let Rory’s art go to the States, which he can do really easily – all he needs to do is look up his contact on the Internet – and leave me to take up a useful hobby. But let me save you the bother – I know all that. I’m going to raise a mortgage on my house, put another lodger in to help cover the payments and give this gallery my best shot. I’ll give it two years and, if in that time I’ve made no money, I’ll accept defeat. OK?’

He sipped his drink. ‘Well, I was going to say a lot of that and I did come down here to talk you out of it, but I suppose I knew there was no point.’

Thea had been hoping for a brisk, impassioned argument. ‘No,’ she said quietly.