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surprised. ‘Did you make them?’
    â€˜Yes, with Gemma Smith. That’s what we were doing the other day.’ Anthony looked slightly mollified by her praise.
    â€˜What a good idea,’ said his mother. She turned to her husband. ‘Remember we did a few plain posters just after we started, to put up in the local vets practices? But these are so much better.’
    â€˜So what’s the problem?’ asked John, still with his eye on his son.
    Anthony shrugged. ‘We were putting a few up around Boroughbie and apparently you’re … not supposed to. We got told to take them all down.’
    â€˜Oh what a shame,’ said Maggie sympathetically.
    â€˜You should have discussed it with us first, surely you realise you can’t put up posters just anywhere,’ said Rachel.
    â€˜I do now. So I’ll just put the whole lot in the bin, shall I?’ Anthony looked furious again and Rachel wished her tone had been less critical.
    â€˜Absolutely not,’ said his father pleasantly. ‘They’re excellent, we just need to find the right places to put them. Vets practices, as your mother said, and maybe that notice board at the newsagent’s.’
    Rachel managed to bite her lip and not say anything else critical. The posters were very good and publicity was exactly what they needed to get the bookings up to a reasonable level once again. She wondered who it was that had stopped Anthony putting up the posters, but decided to wait until they were alone before she asked him.
    The opportunity to ask never seemed to arise which she regretted strongly a couple of days later. She picked up a copy of the twice-weekly local gazette on a trip into Boroughbie and was paging through it as she chatted to her mother over coffee when the article caught her eye.
    Local Business Adds to Litter Problem. The Gazette ’s ongoing campaign against litter in our towns seems to have made no impression on local business Collington Kennels, whose posters and leaflets were left strewn about the streets …
    â€˜Oh no,’ Rachel didn’t need to read further to know this was not the sort of publicity they had been hoping for. She made as if to turn the page so that her mother wouldn’t see the offending article, and then realised there was no chance of keeping it from her parents, who both read the paper from cover to cover. And even if she ‘lost’ the paper, one of their friends was bound to mention it. She pushed the paper over to her mother with a sigh. ‘Look at that. Just what we didn’t need at the moment.’
    She hated to see the way her mother’s face crumbled as she read. Things had been so much better the last few days, her father definitely on the mend and her mother starting to relax. And now this.
    She showed it to Anthony when he came downstairs. He would have to know sometime. For once she felt sorry for him. He had been trying to help, it was such a shame it had turned out so badly.
    â€˜But we didn’t leave any litter!’ he said heatedly. ‘I tried to collect everything, really I did. I don’t know where they got that from.’
    â€˜Maybe you dropped one or two by accident?’ said his mother placatingly.
    â€˜If only the paper hadn’t started this stupid campaign,’ groaned Rachel.
    â€˜It’s a very laudable campaign,’ said her mother.
    â€˜Gemma had the leaflets in her bag,’ said Anthony, remembering. ‘I should have got them back off her. What was she doing throwing them away?’
    â€˜She wouldn’t do it on purpose. She’s such a nice girl.’ Rachel wondered, not for the first time, if her mother ever said anything negative about people.
    â€˜It’s the last time I involve her in anything,’ said Anthony, jumping to his feet. ‘And don’t worry about me causing you any more trouble because I won’t. Everything I do goes wrong, so I won’t do