‘You’re right, I mean I should go, shouldn’t I? Why shouldn’t I go? I can’t remember the last time I went out for dinner. I can’t remember the last time I ate a meal that I didn’t share with a dog. I’m going!’

Alex nodded encouragingly, pointing at the phone where international film star Blake Fletcher was presumably still on hold.

‘Hello? Blake, are you there?’

Are you there? mouthed Alex, burying her face in Buoy’s fur to stifle the laughter.

‘I’m here, on hold,’ Blake said cheerfully.

‘Well, thank you, I had to check my schedule, but I can fit you in. Dinner would be lovely. I’ll see you at eight.’ She ended the call and then looked at Alex. ‘Dear God,’ she said. ‘I don’t have thing to wear that isn’t made of tweed and doesn’t smell of dog.’

9

‘On second thoughts, I don’t have time for this.’ Sue stared into dark and musty wardrobe, and capacious Victorian monolith that could easily have provided a handy portal to Narnia. ‘I’ve still got to run the children’s choir through their paces, and check that Jed knows what he’s doing.’

‘First of all,’ Tamsyn said, ‘Cordelia is taking on the children’s choir, as agreed, she’ll be rehearsing them through the Slade–Metallica mash-up that she’s got planned even as we speak. And second of all, my husband is very good at doing Christmas blessings, it’s sort of at the top of his job description, right under the heading where it says “Vicar”.’

‘Yes, yes, of course, but you know how I—’

‘Like to control everything,’ Tamsyn finished for her. ‘But you can’t control everything. For example, when you woke up this morning, and put on a pair of jeans that are made mostly of dog hair and poodle drool, you had no idea that you were going to be spending the evening going out to dinner with a movie star.’

‘I don’t think I want to go, actually,’ Sue said, sitting down on her bed. ‘No, I think I’ll ring and cancel. I’m coming down with something … Piles maybe. Or the plague.’

‘Can I go then?’ Alex offered. ‘I’ll go. I don’t mind going.’

‘Alex, and you a newly married woman.’ Tamsyn looked scandalised. ‘I’ll go.’

‘I can’t go,’ Sue said. ‘Look at me, I’ve got the hair of an Airedale, the skin of an eighty-two-year-old, the clothes of a mad bag lady. How can I possibly go?’