‘Then why is she sending daily updates?’ She shook her head. ‘Did you know? Did you know this guy . . .’

‘Simeon Lee.’

Simeon Lee, chair of a local history group working to preserve Devon’s architectural heritage.

‘Did you know he was going to kick off ?’

‘I’d heard a rumour, but I didn’t think it would come to anything. Then Sam messaged me.’

‘When?’ Last night? Dawn?

‘Late. It’s not her fault, Nell. I asked her to keep on top of things.’

‘What kind of a manager can’t cope on her own?’

‘Oh, come on – this is something we have to deal with.’

She scrolled through the email again. ‘She says that we’re not going to get planning permission.’

‘She thinks there might – might – be a problem.’

‘And why am I only hearing about this now?’

‘Because . . .’ He hesitated, choosing his words carefully. ‘When it first came up, we’d been having a tough time. You’d had – well, you know, you weren’t well.’

‘It was depression, Chris. You can say the word.’ It had been inevitable, or so she told herself now; the natural result of an endless cycle of hope, followed by crushing, soul-destroying disappointment as Jess’s pregnancy – accidental, but such a joy – had progressed without a hitch to a home birth and a healthy baby boy, while she, Nell, continued to – fail. There had been days when she thought she might actually go mad with longing, days when she could not bear to hear about Maude’s mum and how well baby Leo was doing. Even now she found it hard to take any real interest in him, and on the rare occasions they were all in the same room together she made sure to keep her distance. It had all been so – unfair.

He glanced up at the ceiling guiltily, as if Maude might overhear. ‘It was difficult, for both of us. Then he seemed to go off the boil for a bit; then there was the stuff with Maude.’

Days when all Chris seemed to see or hear was his daughter, not his wife.

‘Even so.’ She stood and took her cup to the sink, tipping the cold tea away.

‘I didn’t think it was all going to kick off so quickly.’

‘We should never have come away. I told you—’

‘We needed this.’ He stood up, scraping his chair across the floorboards. ‘We agreed we needed to get away. Anyway, it’s not like you couldn’t check the gallery emails whenever you wanted; you didn’t, I did.’

‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’ He always did this, shifting the argument, making it sound as though it was her fault. She didn’t understand where it had come from, this sudden emergency that absolutely had to be dealt with by Chris, in person.

‘Nothing – it’s not supposed to mean anything.’

‘Will you be able to get back for the party?’