What was Laura doing today, she wondered? Four months since she’d left with Cassie. And another five months before she would be back. The last communication she’d had was a WhatsApp photograph of her and Cassie inside a thatched mud hut, standing beside a toothless man in a felt trilby and traditional striped cape and a small, grinning boy in a grey hoodie, who was holding up a stack of brightly coloured friendship bracelets. All around them on the straw-covered floor were dozens and dozens of guinea pigs. It was captioned by Laura:

This is a guinea-pig farm, can you believe it, Mum?

Horace would not be impressed!!!

Meg knelt and scooped up the bunch of letters, carried them through to the kitchen and plonked them on the table. Daphne meowed.

‘Dinner is coming!’ She tore open a packet of a new, supposedly highly nutritious cat food she was trying out, but which Daphne didn’t seem wild about, squeezed its stinky contents into the bowl and put it on the floor. The cat walked around it, peering at it warily, and then, dismissively, walked away.

‘Great! What do you want? Beluga caviar?’

The cat reached the kitchen door, gave a disdainful miaowww, then jumped out through the flap.

‘Go find yourself a takeaway out in the garden!’ she said. ‘Chinese? Pizza? Thai? Maybe a Mexican?’

The creature had always been Laura’s pet, sleeping with her on the bed. Ever since Laura had gone, it seemed to Meg that the cat held her responsible for her daughter’s absence, and kept its distance – apart from when it was hungry – despite all her efforts to befriend it.

She switched on the oven, then went upstairs to Laura’s room, where the smell of sawdust greeted her. She opened the window to air the room, before checking on the precious creatures in their cages. Relieved as she was every day that none of them had died, she topped up their food and water then took a few photos to send to Laura – she demanded them every few days. Horace, his little face twitching, actually looked like he was posing for his close-up.

Back downstairs, she opened the freezer and took a desultory look through the options. Like the cat, she wasn’t hungry, but she knew she needed to eat. She removed a vegan curry, which she’d bought as an experiment, read the instructions, removed the packaging, put it on a baking tray and bunged it in the oven. Then she sat down to tackle the post.

The first envelope she opened, which was for Laura, had an Edinburgh postmark. It was from the Royal School of Veterinary Studies, giving Laura the dates of the autumn semester, starting 2 October. Meg was so proud her daughter had got in, against stiff competition. She immediately messaged her with the date.

Then she opened the buff envelope addressed to herself. And felt a strange frisson as she read the contents.