‘Well, I don’t mind. I’d love to have Toby here, but what about Ben? Won’t he be expecting to pick him up from you?’

‘Ben’s staying the weekend. It’s some sort of team-building exercise. Although he hasn’t definitely got the job, they want him to go along to see if he blends in.’

‘How grizzly!’

‘Mm. Poor Ben. Not his sort of thing at all. But actually he’s very good at all that outward-bound stuff, so he’ll be all right with that.’

‘But it’s still a late night for Toby, even if you pick him up.’

‘Well, yes, which is why I was hoping you’d let him stay the night.’

‘Well – it’s not that I wouldn’t love to have him, it’s just where on earth could I put him? The house is full and so is my darkroom.’

‘Toby says he’s very good at sleeping on floors,’ said Molly after a brief pause. ‘And he wants to know how the puppies are.’

‘They were fine last time I spoke to Susan,’ she said. She’d arranged to ring when Rory was working. If she spoke to Rory, he might find out how badly her plans for the gallery were going. She waited while Molly passed the message on. ‘And he’ll really be all right on the floor?’

‘He says so.’

‘Well, I dare say I can sort something out. So you’ll pick him up tomorrow morning?’

‘That’s it.’ Molly lowered her voice confidentially. ‘I’il have to think of some way of entertaining him over the weekend. I don’t suppose there’s a new Disney, is there?’

‘I haven’t a clue, but I’ll ask the lodgers when they come back. In the meantime, I’d better sort out some sort of bed.’ A horrible thought occurred to her. ‘You have asked Toby, haven’t you? You’ve asked if it’s all right with him to come and spend the night with me?’

‘Of course! Honestly, you’d think I’d never had anything to do with children!’

While Thea was sorting out her bedroom so she could find a corner for Toby in it, she debated whether or not she should ring Rory and tell him the whole plan was off, that she couldn’t open an art gallery in the time and that he might as well take his paintings to New York and have done with it. Yet, somehow, she couldn’t, not yet, not until she’d worried away at the problem a little longer and made absolutely sure she’d thought of everything.