He puts the phone back in his pocket, gives Reggie a pat and they set off again. Cosmo feels light-hearted, excited, happy. He knows why but he doesn’t want to admit it even to himself. Instead, he plans what he must take on his jaunt to the moor: his camera, the Ordnance Survey map, water for Reggie. He remembers the woman in the Coffee Shop, Cara, and he laughs and repeats the words to himself: Dolce far niente.

As she drives out of the car park, Amy sees him striding along with Reggie. She likes the look of him: the short spiky black hair, those dark brown eyes, and his ready smile. She wishes now that she’d asked him where he lived when he wasn’t dog-sitting, what he did for a living, but it seemed all a bit too quick: too keen. She might go into the Coffee Shop tomorrow or she might wait a day or two. Amy drives away in the opposite direction, up Shadycombe Road and into the residential part of the town. She parks outside a semi-detached Victorian villa and gets out. Collecting some tins of paint from the back of the car, she walks up the drive, opens the front door of the house and shouts: ‘It’s me, Dad.’

There is an answering call, and she carries the cans inside, puts them on the doormat and shuts the door behind her. Her father appears in a doorway just up the hall and nods at her.

‘Perfect timing. Thought they were in the van. Thanks, sweetheart. Bring anything else?’

She grins at him. ‘If you mean, did I bring you something to eat, the answer’s yes.’

‘Come into the kitchen,’ he says. ‘I can take ten minutes. How’re you doing down in Courtenay Street?’

She nods, following him into the big kitchen. ‘Pretty good. It’s a nice space to work in and they’re lovely people.’ She glances round. ‘I like it better than this. And it’s really cool that it’s only just a few doors up from us.’

‘Bigger, though,’ he says, taking a flask out of a large canvas holdall. ‘Much posher than we are in our little cottage.’

‘I like our little cottage,’ she says. ‘And talking of posh, I’ve just met this guy called Cosmo.’

He raises his eyebrows. ‘Seriously? Cosmo? Very posh. What is he, a grockle?’

She shakes her head and passes him a pasty. ‘No. He’s dog-sitting for some locals for a couple of months, he says. Nice dog.’

Her father bites into his pasty. ‘What’s the dog’s name?’

‘Reggie.’ Amy laughs. ‘Cosmo was feeding him a bit of his sandwich so I told him off.’

Her father nods. ‘Sounds familiar. Interfering as usual.’ He pours tea from his flask into a mug. ‘So are you seeing him again?’