Colin certainly refused to listen to any discussion about money or even to consider an estimate. ‘Don’t be stupid,’ he crowed. ‘If I took it away you couldn’t get on with publishing it, could you?’

I went to put on a CD, searching the rack for something very soothing for us all. I wasn’t sorry when the end of the day finally arrived and I could make a ten-minute visit across the yard.

Cassie was sitting on her booster seat at the table, doing her favourite puzzle. Shiny painted fruits and vegetables had to be fitted into the right outlines in a wooden board. ‘Here’s the carrot,’ she told me when I sat down next to her.

‘So it is. What about the apple?’

We put our heads together and sorted through the shapes.

Evelyn was standing at the cooker dreamily stirring pasta sauce for Cassie’s supper. She held her flowing velvet sleeve out of the way with her free hand while she gazed out of the window. ‘‘Lo, Sadie,’ she murmured. She was wearing big silver hooped earrings that swung when she moved her head.

Penny was peering at her computer monitor by the front window. It was coming up to VAT time and she had insisted on doing the company books herself, but even though she was tapping away at the keyboard I could sense that her attention wasn’t on the job. The atmosphere in the kitchen didn’t feel comfortable.

Evelyn spooned the pasta into Cassie’s bowl. We put the puzzle to one side and I laid her place with her spoon and fork. ‘Looks good,’ I told her. ‘Can’t I have some?’

She wagged her head from side to side and laughed. ‘No.’

‘One mouthful?’

‘Nowuh.’

There was burnished yellow late-afternoon sunlight sliding through the side windows. Evelyn curved her slender body against the door frame and gazed across the yard to where a seat stood against a whitewashed brick wall. In the intervals of Cassie’s chatter I could hear that she was softly humming to herself. After a minute she drifted outside and sat on the bench with her face turned up to the evening sun. Penny’s faux-intent rattling at the keyboard stopped at once.

I said, ‘Pen, why don’t you go and sit in the sun with Evelyn for ten minutes? Cassie and I are eating pasta.’

‘Not you.’ Cassie chortled. ‘Mine.’

Penny took off her reading glasses and pinched her nose. She screwed her eyes shut and I recognised from the way her shoulders were drawn up that she was on the defensive. There was a small silence while Cassie stirred her food, then pinched a squirl between her fat fingers and fed it into her mouth. She glanced sideways at me to make sure I’d seen her and then smirkingly did it again.