While Faith took over the hostess duties and served up the lasagne, Tara sipped her wine. ‘There are still a few sticking points, one being the argument over getting a pet,’ she said. ‘I would have liked to wait a bit longer, but Iain persuaded me the time was right, and we found a gorgeous Ragdoll kitten for sale. It’s not ready to leave its mum yet, but we took the girls to see it after school yesterday. It was supposed to be a nice surprise.’

‘Why do I get the feeling this doesn’t have a happy ending?’ Faith said.

Tara took another gulp of wine. ‘The kitten was grey and white with the most beautiful blue eyes, and Lily literally gasped when she saw it. For once it was Molly who was the fly in the ointment, but I was expecting that because she was holding out for a dog. I was hoping she’d come around – she’d do anything for Lily, and the kitten is adorable. It was meant to be something that could unite us. It doesn’t come with a history and has no claim on one side of our misfit family or the other.’

‘You’re hardly misfits,’ said Faith. ‘And you’ll come together eventually, with or without the kitten.’

‘At the moment it looks like it’s without. Molly and I had a flaming row this morning,’ Tara said. She winced at the memory. She’d found her daughter skulking in the utility room. ‘I thought she was up to no good when I caught her up so early. She’d assumed I’d gone to work, but knowing tonight would be a late one, I’d treated myself to a lie-in. Molly was messing around with the washing machine and …’ She covered her eyes with a hand as shame scorched her cheeks. ‘I was already angry with her for being so truculent over the kitten and I let rip. We woke the rest of the house up, and it was Lily who came to her rescue. She admitted she’d wet the bed and Molly was only trying to hide the evidence.’

‘And I presume wetting the bed is a sign that Lily’s still troubled,’ said April.

‘The arguments over the kitten must have been another tipping point. Iain had mentioned she went through a phase of bed-wetting when her mum died, and there’s a protective sheet on her bed just in case. Anyway, so much for the kitten bringing us together,’ Tara said, raising her glass as if in a toast.

‘I am so glad I never had kids,’ Faith muttered.

‘I could be living in Paris, running my own patisserie by now if things had been different,’ Tara rued.