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head.
    ‘Suppose,’ he said, ‘she doesn’t want any of this?’
    Daniel swivelled to look at him. ‘You mean, she doesn’t want the company to grow?’
    ‘You’d have to ask her,’ Jasper said, his gaze on Polynesia. ‘But I’d guess she doesn’t want it to get less personal. Because if it isn’t personal, then it’s had it.’
    Daniel said quickly, ‘That’s my job.’
    ‘What is?’
    ‘To grow the company while retaining its essence. Susie’s vision.’
    ‘You,’ Jasper said to Polynesia, ‘are my ideal woman.’
    ‘Radipole Road, south-west six,’ Polynesia said clearly.
    ‘I don’t want to even
blur
her vision,’ Daniel said, ‘let alone lose it. It’s a wonderful vision, and it works. But we can’t stand still. We have to build on what we have. And Susie has to cooperate with that house she wants to buy.’
    ‘What’s that got to do with it?’ Jasper said, still scratching the parrot’s head.
    Daniel let a beat fall, and then he said, ‘It’s a distraction.’
    ‘She can cope.’
    ‘She will use it as an excuse not to focus,’ Daniel said. ‘We need her to see what we have to do next to expand the company, not to spend half a million pounds that is of no benefit to the company’s future.’
    Jasper blew Polynesia a kiss. Then he came back to the table and reached past Daniel for his coffee cup. He said, ‘Why didn’t Cara come?’
    ‘She’s gone to her Pilates class.’
    ‘Not ducking out of things?’
    Dan said stoutly, ‘She’s rung Susie already.’
    ‘To say …?’
    ‘Please don’t buy this house. Please listen to us about the best way to franchise the brand out to other manufacturers. Please don’t try and dodge the issue of the company’s future by getting involved in buying another property you do not need.’
    Jasper finished his coffee and put the empty cup down on the table. He said softly, ‘Maybe it isn’t a distraction.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Maybe,’ Jasper said, staring at the framed Frida Kahlo poster on the wall above the table, ‘this house is actually
about
the company. About her fear that you’ll grow it into something she can’t recognize, something that isn’t
her
anymore. This cottage is where she can go back to her roots, where it all began. It’s a size she can manage.’
    Daniel stared at him. ‘You think it’s deliberate?’
    ‘I think it might be.’
    ‘So …?’
    ‘So she’s fighting for some kind of creative survival.’
    Daniel got up slowly and walked to the door to the hall. Then he turned, and said to his father-in-law, ‘So you won’t try and dissuade her from buying this house?’
    Jasper didn’t look at him. He went on staring at Frida Kahlo’s apricot-coloured roses in their fat black vase. He said gently but firmly, ‘No, I won’t.’
    In her flat near the Potteries Museum in Stoke-on-Trent, Grace was ignoring her private telephone. For some instinctive reason, she had never given Jeff her work phone number, so if she switched her private mobile to silent, she would not be agitated every time he either tried to call or sent another aggrieved text.
    He had not tried to contact her at all the previous evening. He hadn’t spoken another word all the way up the M6, and he didn’t speak when he dropped her off at Manchester Piccadilly station. She had got out of the car, clumsily retrieved her bag from the boot, and was stooping to say ‘Have a nice weekend’ or something equally pitiful, when he slammed the car into gear and roared off. If it had been a more dignified car, and not an ageing Nissan Pixo, his angry departure might have been more effective. As it was, buoyed up by her own indignation and sudden sense of liberty, Grace bought a single ticket to Stoke, a cheese baguette and a quarter-bottle of Beaujolais, and felt that she had not only been justified in refusing to go to Edinburgh, but had somehow triumphed.
    This elation lasted until she got home at almost midnight.But then, confronted with a chilly