‘Okay but, um, I wondered if we could talk for a moment—’

‘What about?’

‘It’s just, I’m feeling pretty bad, you know. And I just thought maybe—’

‘I’m sorry, but I’m not about to drive up to Loch Fyne with calamine lotion,’ I cut in. ‘Borrow some trousers or wrap yourself tightly in cling film. Can midges bite through that?’

‘I’m not sure,’ he mutters. ‘But, Viv, I just wanted to tell you—’

‘Bye, Andy,’ I say quickly. ‘Goodbye.’

Friday, August 9

Home and shattered after a full-on working week. It’s so tempting to fall on my laptop, tip wine down my neck and spend the evening googling Estelle Lang. But I shall resist. Instead, I make a pot of virtuous mint tea and google: Can midges bite through material?

Happily, the answer appears to be, ‘Yes, unless it is extremely thick.’

Monday, August 12

Izzy is back from the Lake District, brown as a biscuit and full of the joys of the World’s Most Disgusting Caravan (™) which, by all accounts, is a little piece of Paradise in the Lakes. Sadly for me, she has also gone back to school today, so I haven’t had much chance to hang out with her, apart from to supervise a brief episode of Izzy Cooks! last night, as she was keen to demonstrate Jules’s home-made sourdough pizza method. As I swept up scatterings of flour she told me all about the friends she and Maeve had made at the caravan park, and how they were appalled to discover that Scottish kids return to school a month earlier than their new (English) mates. Of course, we started the holidays a month earlier than they did, but that did nothing to assuage the huff she was in this morning.

‘It’s not fair,’ she muttered as we strode along to school. Despite Penny’s insistence that I should look at the lollipop man ‘in a different way’, I could only look at him in an awkward way today, which I suppose was different to how I used to look at him – only not in the way she’d meant. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to look at him neutrally again?

And so to work. As Rose is perennially involved in back-to-back meetings I still don’t know what she has in store for me. Maybe she’s forgotten that she sort of promised me something? Or has she changed her mind? ‘You mentioned we should have a chat, a little while back?’ I venture, taking her a coffee when she reappears briefly at her desk.

‘Yes,’ she says, nodding, ‘and I promise I’ll clear some time at some point.’

Which hardly sounds like it’s going to happen anytime soon. So, after my initial excitement, it’s a bit of a comedown really.