Ezra snorted a soft laugh. ‘She’s certainly unnecessary,’ he agreed.

‘I meant the situation. How you pretend you can’t stand each other.’

He looked at her sharply. ‘Pretend?’

Gilly pursed her lips, stuffing the last of the spent roofing felt into a bag and wondering if she’d pushed too hard. ‘I’d give anything to know how it started. Did you two hate each other on sight, or what?’

Ezra had his back to her and said nothing in reply. When he turned, he was frowning at his hands, as if in concentration, although he held nothing between his palms. Just for a moment, he seemed miles away – or perhaps as if he had slipped back in time to something that had happened long ago.

‘Ezra?’

He looked up at her and the moment had passed. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Time to get the new stuff on. We need to overlap it to stop leaks seeping in between the joints.’

Gilly nodded and helped him wrestle the roll of felt up the ladder, but she couldn’t let go of the idea that she might just have hit the jackpot in the spinning roulette wheel that was Ezra and Edie circling each other.

‘You didn’t answer my question,’ she said, as between them they unrolled and measured the new felt.

Ezra didn’t look at her. ‘What question?’

Gilly sighed. ‘Never mind.’

‘What on earth are you doing?’

Edie’s voice took them both by surprise. It was accompanied by the swinging shut of the garden gate, and then there she was below them, standing on the path with her hands on her hips, glaring up at them.

‘I thought you weren’t going to be back until this evening,’ Ezra said.

‘Oh, did you now?’ Edie crossed her arms. ‘So – what? You thought you’d dismantle my shed while I was gone?’

‘We’re fixing the roof,’ Gilly told her. ‘It leaks, remember? I wanted to fix it for you and Ezra said he’d help.’

There was a moment of silence, during which Ezra and Edie stared at each other.

‘Well,’ Edie said eventually. ‘It does need fixing.’

‘Exactly,’ said Gilly. ‘And I couldn’t do it all by myself, so…’

Edie nodded but said nothing else. Instead she walked past the shed and down the path, disappearing into the house and closing the print room door behind her. Gilly let out a breath, aware that the moment could have been worse.

‘I’ve a mind to leave the bloody felt off,’ Ezra grumbled.

‘Oh no, don’t,’ Gilly begged him. ‘I’ll never get it right on my own. Come on, we’re halfway done!’

Ezra sighed and shook his head, but he didn’t climb down from the roof. They carried on in silence. Gilly could see he was brooding, his brow knitted together in a deep frown.

They were cutting the felt to fit when the print room door opened again. Edie reappeared with a tray of tea and biscuits. She carried it up the path and left it on the lid of the compost bin, glancing up at them.