I smile as I make coffee. ‘You won’t make a documentary about this?’

Nick laughs, and it occurs to me how easy he is to talk to, and how ridiculous it was to feel even remotely agitated about him dropping by. ‘I promise.’

‘Well, it kind of looks like it wasn’t an accident.’

‘Wow, really?’

I nod and pour our coffees. ‘Yeah. They’ve been up to this kind of stuff for years, apparently. It might have been careless, but the rumour is they were short on fulfilling an urgent order, so they sent the wrong product.’ I grimace. ‘It’s scary, actually, how similar our human and pet products are, ingredients-wise. But now it’s all been glossed over, and they’re kind of reinventing the company as this purveyor of fresh, modern, health-giving foods – so it’s probably turned out to be a good thing.’

He smiles, and we move on to chatting about Izzy and Spencer – Nick doesn’t have kids – and before I know it, the afternoon has flown by. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, ‘but I need to pick up Izzy from school.’

‘God, I’m so sorry. I’ve taken up your whole afternoon.’

‘No, not at all. It’s been great to meet you properly.’

He looks around for Bobby who’s been lying at my feet the whole time. ‘Thank you so much for lunch. It was lovely.’

‘It was nothing, really!’

‘And for looking after Bobby.’

‘A total pleasure,’ I say.

There’s a bit of a kerfuffle while we gather together Bobby’s things: the luxury basket with its fur-lined interior; his ‘daytime cushion’ and fleecy blanket, plus tennis balls, food and water bowls and the ‘spare’ meat in its plastic tray, which Penny had given me to keep in the freezer ‘in case something happens’. Nick is laden with all of this stuff – as Penny had been when she’d brought him yesterday. If I’d known Bobby would come with so much equipment I’d have helped her to lug it all around. So, despite Nick’s protests, and to save him from going back to Penny’s to fetch his hire car, I help him to carry it all to her flat. On the ten-minute walk I find myself telling him about the struggling museum and my plan to propose a fashion show in her honour there.

‘Really? That’d be incredible!’

‘But I’m not so sure how she’d feel about it,’ I add.

‘Why’s that?’

I tell him about the night the museum’s future was discussed, with Isla and Hamish, and how Penny had shunned the idea of involving herself even in an advisory role.

‘Well, that’s just Mum,’ he says. ‘She can be surprisingly modest and I’m not sure whether she thinks of herself as being any kind of expert on anything.’

‘I can’t understand why not,’ I say.