‘You have. Way too much. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m dying for a cup of tea, so I’ll go.’

She was out of the car and up the steps to her house when she realised she hadn’t thanked him for driving all the way down from London to help her.

She stalked back to the car. He opened the passenger door. ‘Thank you very much for helping. Please don’t feel obliged to do it again.’

She had found her key, unlocked her door and got through it before Ben drove away. Once in the kitchen she stared at the whisky bottle for a long time before settling for tea. But she was glad she’d made the sober choice because five minutes later there was a knock on the door.

It was Ben. ‘I’ve changed my mind. I would like a cup of tea.’

‘Then you’d better come in.’ Thea had had plenty of time to regret losing her temper. She followed Ben down the stairs to the kitchen. ‘The kettle’s just boiled, it won’t take long.’

Ben stopped at the kitchen table and turned round to confront her. ‘Actually, I don’t care about the tea. I came back because I can’t bear the thought of you trying to open a gallery without any sort of experience, or contacts, or anything. Whatever you think about me personally, you must let me help where I can.’

Having recently wanted to tear him limb from limb hadn’t affected Thea’s feelings for him at all. She shrugged. ‘Then thank you. I would be very grateful for that.’

He scowled. ‘You don’t have to be grateful,’ he said angrily and strode out of the room. She could hear that he took the stairs three at a time.

Meeting the owner of the property’s solicitor was not the boring but easy task she’d imagined. The owner, it seemed, had been let down over matters of rent several times. Thus, he not only wanted Thea to sign a contract undertaking to rent the property for two years, whether the gallery was open or not, but he wanted three months’ rent as a deposit. This amounted to approximately six thousand pounds, money Thea had to have before she could sign the contract and get into the space to start decorating.