‘Lucky you.’ Angela sighed theatrically. ‘My Guy is boring.’

‘Boring is safe.’

‘Now, that…’ Angela tottered into Molly’s living room on ridiculously high heels and fell onto a settee ‘…is why I’m here. To stop you being boring. To get back to my original question: you’re not going to ask me, are you?’

‘To do what?’

‘To be your chaperon.’

‘No.’

‘You intend to take Sam, right?’

‘Right.’

Angela took a deep breath. ‘Well, I’ve decided to forgive you for not taking me. Though why I should, I don’t know. Because with me there you wouldn’t get a look-in. I’d sweep the man off his feet in two seconds flat.’

‘But you have Guy. Your fiancé, remember?’

Angela grinned. ‘That’s right. I have Guy, and as nobility is my middle name-’

‘Oh, please!’

‘Don’t interrupt me when I’m being noble. I’ve decided to offer my services as babysitter. For Sam. And for Lionel. There.’ She beamed. ‘How noble’s that?’

‘Very noble.’ Molly winced. Her hand hurt, she was dead tired and she had mountains of paperwork to plough through before bedtime. And what her friend was suggesting was impossible. ‘Angela, thanks for the offer, but you know I can’t leave Sam.’

‘He’ll be fine with me.’

‘He’ll be stoic. He’s always stoic and it breaks my heart.’

Angela’s face softened. ‘So share the care. I love the kid too, you know.’

‘I know you do.’ Angela’s heart was huge. ‘But, Angie, there’s only a chink of room for loving anyone left in him, and that chink’s for me. And that’s only because I look like his mother.’

‘And where does that leave you?’

‘Right here. With him. Where I want to be.’

‘So what are you doing now?’

‘I’m going to bed.’ It was a lie. She needed to ring Hannah Copeland for the property details, read everything she could find on the place and sort out the Section Thirty-Two. But if she told Angela that she’d drop everything and help.