She flicked on the TV, humming to herself as she went through that evening’s programme guide. There was a detective drama on at nine, the first episode of which she’d enjoyed very much last week. Before then, the tennis was on BBC2, which was quite soothing; one of the sounds of summer, she always thought – the clop and swish of racquet hitting ball. Plus, of course, there was no small amount of pleasure to be had from watching those very athletic young men in their nice white shorts; always an enjoyable way to while away the hours. What else? Well, good old Coronation Street, obviously, and—

BOOM! Crack!

Thunder crashed outside, lightning flashed and then there was a violent bang directly overhead, followed by the television making an alarming fizzling noise and going completely blank. ‘Oh!’ gulped Alison aloud, spluttering on her wine in shock. For a second she sat there frozen, hunched over with fright, as if the ceiling was about to come down on her in a shower of plaster, before she unfolded herself again with a wary glance around. Unfortunately the television remained silent and apparently dead. ‘Oh . . . bugger,’ she added unhappily. She pressed the remote, trying to switch the thing back on, but nothing happened. ‘You’re kidding me,’ she groaned, stabbing repeatedly at the button with no success. ‘Please. No!’

Well, she’d gone right off thunderstorms, that was for sure. Had lightning struck the satellite dish? she wondered anxiously. Were all the electrics in the house now trashed? She thought with a pang of her Crunchie ice-cream awaiting her in the freezer and jumped to her feet. No, the lights were still working at least, she realized, flipping them on and off. And when she went into the kitchen, the fridge was purring obediently, the clock on the cooker displaying the correct time.

Rain continued to slap against the windows as she returned to the sofa and ate another mouthful of lasagne. Okay, so she would have to watch her programmes on the laptop, she supposed, just until she could get someone round to figure out what was wrong with the TV. One of her clients, Becky, had an electrician husband who might be able to fix it for her, she comforted herself. But when she tried to refresh her laptop screen, she was faced with an error message instead of her home page. No internet connection can be detected, it said unhelpfully and she let out a growl of frustration. ‘Oh come on!’ Had the lightning frazzled her broadband as well? Her grasp of electricity and circuits – of technology in general, let’s face it – was flaky at the best of times, but she was not feeling hopeful.