What was it about pets that meant you got advice from random strangers all the time?

‘Be careful with that, will you?’ A posh voice, cool and controlled. I turned. The woman was on the doorstep, holding a small plant in a pot. ‘It’s quite valuable. Please don’t scrape it.’ The man gave me what I thought was a class-conscious eye roll and I glowed. I wasn’t the middle-class bitch here! I might own truffle oil but I was just like him!

She was older than me, eyes sinking under crow’s feet, hair greying. She looked me over, and I saw her frown, perhaps at my unsuitable clothes, or maybe at Poppet, who was being a nightmare.

‘Hello,’ I said. ‘I’m next door. Have you moved in?’

‘Moving.’ She was looking at the yapping, straining dog. ‘Is that a scarf?’

‘Oh, I couldn’t find his lead, and he’s such a bad dog, he’d be on the road in seconds.’ Poppet had been a deep trial to me from the very beginning, when I’d been stuck at home with him as a puppy, unable even to step outside – they couldn’t go out at all for the first two weeks, who knew? I’d begged Nick to let me go out for air, ten minutes even.

‘But the pupster will be lonely,’ he’d said, putting on his work jacket, something as simple as going to an office making me jealous. I had realised at that point that Poppet was now the number two priority in our family, and I had slipped to third.

The woman bent to him now, and very firmly said, ‘Sit down.’ And he did, ears flattened.

‘That’s amazing.’

‘Just firmness. I grew up around dogs.’ She crouched down, stroking his silky ears. He gazed up with deep adoration. ‘They’re so guileless. Not like people. He’s a lurcher, is he?’

‘Yeah.’ How did people do that, tell just by looking? Really, I knew nothing about dogs.

She put out a hand. ‘Nora Halscombe.’

I grasped it, fumbling with the dog. Her skin was surprisingly calloused. ‘Hi, Nora. This is Poppet. Daft name, daft dog. I just wanted to say hello. There’s only us, you know. It can be very isolated down here.’ Again, the penetrating gaze. I felt a craven urge to do something and bent to lift a packing case the men had left by the stone path. ‘I’ll get this, you must be swamped.’

I felt her hand encircle my wrist, cool and oddly strong. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Please don’t. Not in your condition.’

I must have turned pale, and for a moment I felt the same cold dread flush through me like a weir, as it had every day since it happened. ‘I didn’t think I showed much yet.’ The baggy jumper should have hidden it, surely.

‘Oh, I know the signs.’