By September, Dad’s face is the colour of Surrendered Skies and Mum asks me to defer my place at art school to take over in the shop.

‘What about Beth?’ I don’t say. My brainy sister’s already at Cambridge, full of demand curves and cost-benefit analyses, even when we go round Miss Selfridge. ‘What about my plans?’ I don’t say. ‘The galleries I’ll visit, the cheap-but-nourishing suppers I’ll cook, the hot, arty men I’ll meet?’

I’d been a Saturday girl since I was knee high to a stepladder. I learned the difference between natural bristles and pure synthetics, when to recommend eggshell, what coverage to expect from quick dry satinwood. I learned what discount to give which tradespeople, how to refuse credit, how to flirt. In my summer holidays, while Beth and her mates would be sunbathing at Sandleford Mere, I’d be watching newly mortgaged couples testing their colour compatibility.

‘Oof,’ a Samantha would exhale, ‘what about Etruscan Moon?’

‘Or,’ her Matt or Nathan would counter, ‘Glacial Spring with an accent wall of Lemon Pie?’ And off they’d go, clutching their swatches, straight round to the DIY Superstore for something vaguely similar and ready-mixed.

Now I learn that Dad’s stockturn has halved over the past year.

‘He’s been talking up the takings,’ I tell Mum.

‘He’s got the blues,’ she says.

Marek, one of the younger regulars, helps me clear the window of dusty tubs of trade magnolia, and I spend my Sunday painting an interpretation of Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe on the glass, only this time both men are naked, both women clothed. Predictably, the bizzies call in first thing Monday, blathering about traffic flows and public decency. When I challenge the sergeant to point to an offending willy, she laughs and says it’s been a long time, she’s not sure she’ll know one if it jumps up and bites her. After buying a five-piece brush set which I’d put on special, she says all’s good, and they clear off.

On Tuesday, Dad agrees on a fortnight at the seaside with Mum, tells me I can rename the shop whatever I like. I start explaining that ‘Del’s Decorating Den (estab. 1998)’ might no longer cut it, but he’s already comparing ensuites in Gosport guesthouses with their equivalents in Melcombe Regis.

I call it ‘A Bigger Splash’ and hold a grand reopening with hot drinks and cinnamon buns. When Dexter ‘Decorator to the Discerning’ Davies asks for a bacon bap, I tell him I’m veggie and he can try Butty’s R Us across the road but not to expect much in the way of emulsion. The next day, Marek, who’d overheard, brings me a roasted vegetable wrap and examines every accessory on display before, his cheeks Fire Cracker Red, asking if I’m free on Sunday for a walk around the mere.

After walking round it three times, I ask him back to help sort through the wallpaper books. We chuck the fighter planes and football stadia and the ditzy daisy stuff that’s as tired as Laura Ashley. We take them to the tip in Marek’s van and collect a sofa I’ve found in the classifieds. I tell him it’s for the Saturday Samantha’s and Matt’s or Nathan’s who I’ll coax from B&Q with proper coffee and what my art teacher, lovely Mr. Barrowclough, called my innate sense of colour.

By the time Beth gets home for Christmas, I’ve doubled our year-on-year quarterly turnover. I’ve got Mum doing a Friday traybake for my trade regulars, and Dad’s well enough to be helping on alternate afternoons.

I’m reordering low-tack masking tape when Beth breezes in.

‘It’ll be dead in here next month,’ she says. ‘Maybe offer a January discount. It’s called being price elastic.’

I don’t tell her the only elastic I’m interested in is the waistband of Marek’s boxers. I don’t tell her where to shove her smarty-pants business bullshit. Just as well, because next she offers to look after the place if I fancy a break before she goes back to uni.

‘You know, go off somewhere with Malik.’

‘Marek, but thanks Beth. Yes please.’

I sit my sister down on the sofa and tell her Marek’s booked a table at Grilling Me Softly for New Year’s Eve, that he wants to take me to Paris to see the original Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe. I explain I’m deferring art school for another year, that I have big plans for A Bigger Splash, that when I told Dad he’d given me a smile like Buttered Corn.