‘The language in this room!’ Uncle David croaked. ‘Can we just tone it down!’ He didn’t sound like himself. He sounded paper thin, as though if Penny blew on him hard enough, he would crumple under the weight of her breath.

‘You sound like hell,’ she told him.

‘Darling, I feel like hell,’ he replied, feebly.

The three of them sat in silence for a moment, exhaling in the relief that he was alive, all of them acknowledging that it was a very close call.

‘He works too hard,’ Eric said. ‘If you didn’t work so hard …’

‘Eric. Come on. Now’s not the time.’

‘You were at the pub when it happened?’ Penny asked. Details were arriving piecemeal and she was trying to thread it all together.

‘I found him surrounded by petit fours on the floor of the pastry section after service,’ Eric said. ‘I thought he’d slipped, but then he wasn’t getting up.’ He turned to David. ‘You and me, we’re going to have a talk. If you’d have died …’

Uncle David looked at Penny in a way that would have been pointed if he wasn’t so sallow and grey. Penny gave him half a smile, happy to be his teammate against Eric’s stern words. She’d made every promise she could think of to a god she wasn’t even sure she believed in as they’d waited for him outside the operating room. I’ll visit him more, she’d promised whoever was able to listen to the thoughts in her head. I’ll be a better niece. I’ll buy him nicer presents for his birthday and call every day instead of once a week and if he gets through this I’ll stop giving him a hard time about taking over the pub. I’ll understand that he only wants the best for me. I’ll be kinder to him, I will tell him I love him more …

‘Can I tell her?’ Eric said to his husband.

‘Tell me what?’ Penny looked between them.

Uncle David nodded once, curtly. Eric turned to Penny and said, ‘This is his second one.’

‘Second what?’

‘Second heart attack. He had one at New Year’s. We didn’t tell you, because …’ Eric trailed off, as if he wasn’t sure why.

Uncle David supplied, ‘It was barely even a heart attack. It was … we just didn’t want you to worry.’

Penny’s jaw dropped. Why wouldn’t they tell her Uncle David had been ill? Had had a heart attack?

‘Does Clemmie know?’ she said, trying to keep her voice level.

‘No, darling.’

‘And you’ve been working since then? Who has been running the pub?’