They were lumbering back out onto the motorway half an hour later, having filled up themselves with brioches and cakes and the minibus with diesel, when Carola received a reply. ‘Whoopee! Ona had another little boy by C-section late last night. They’ve called him Ainsley. He’s gone into neonatal care because he was three weeks early but he and Ona will both be fine.’

Unexpectedly, although little Ainsley was not a blood relation, Lily felt her eyes fill with tears and had to dash them away to see the traffic. ‘Give them my love and best wishes,’ she called to Carola when she could speak. Then she settled down to covering the next couple of hundred miles.

By the time they reached the hotel, the same they’d used before, her hand was slightly swollen. She bumbled her way through check-in and joined the others for a meal, eating a big plate of chips, not because she needed them but because it seemed as if she deserved a treat. Then she pleaded tiredness, which wasn’t dishonest because she’d slept badly last night and driven for much of the day, and took dear Doggo out for a long walk to make it up to him that he’d been shut in his cave again.

They walked on the verge next to a main road because Lily didn’t fancy the dark areas she’d walked along before, when Isaac had been with her. Doggo seemed quite at ease, his thin tail waving in time with his stride, his nose to the ground.

Back in her room she showered, then soaked her hand in freezing cold water for fifteen minutes in an effort to stop it ballooning. She’d put the TV on a music channel and her heart clenched when Jennifer Paige’s ‘Just a Little Crush’ came on, her eyes filling with tears that seemed all too near the surface at the moment. When she sniffed, Doggo came to lay his chin comfortingly on her thigh, gazing at her with melting dark eyes.

‘I’ll see him again,’ she told Doggo dolefully. ‘I’ve got you.’

Doggo’s tail thumped.

‘It’s all right for you to look so pleased,’ she told him drearily. ‘But I have no idea how you deal with a guy you had one fantastic night with before he took on looking after his seriously ill ex. Do you know your two humans are together at the moment?’

Doggo’s ears pricked sharply, as if this were unexpected but welcome news.

‘This could be nice for you. Your family’s a family again.’ Lily stroked his silken head. ‘Whereas my families … well, my very existence seems to cause problems.’

From where she’d left it charging on the bedside, her phone began to ring and on the screen she read Isaac.