I'm not entirely sure how I got through it. My heart was leaping in my ribcage, but I greeted my ex-husband and his wife as if I did this every day. Not just a few times a term at school events, totally psyched up beforehand and with a couple of glasses of white wine under my belt. And the thing was, I had divorced friends who did this regularly. Josie even went on holiday with her ex and his new wife, and she didn't have a partner either, so I knew it was me. But it still hurt so much. Those Wendy Cope lines: ‘And yet I cannot cure myself of love, For what I thought you were before I knew you,’ sprang perpetually to mind. Not that he was horrible now, or mean; he hadn't changed, however much I sometimes tried to persuade myself he had. He just didn't love me. And since no one had ever come close since he'd left, how on earth was I supposed to get over him, as everyone said I should, and as I knew I should, too? Not by smiling into his blue eyes which matched the sea beyond as he hugged me warmly, that's for sure. His face was wreathed in genuine pleasure, clearly hoping my presence here marked something of a watershed. The beginning of a new chapter, Flora? A much less emotional chapter. Emotional was a word that was used a lot. As if I was neurotic. Unhinged.

Well, true, some of my behavior had been less than hinged, I supposed, as I looked into the equally hopeful eyes of his tall, blonde, attractive wife. The one with the wide smile and the longest legs — about twice the length of mine. The one I'd sobbed down the telephone to in the small hours and who was giving me the warmest of greetings as she told me, confidentially, that she was so pleased I'd come. I hadn't known you'd be here! I wanted to screech back as she stood, holding both my hands in hers to get a proper look at me.

“It's lovely to see you too,” I told her, hyperventilating.

Apart from anything else, I'd barely brushed my teeth this morning. Certainly not my hair, and I didn't have a scrap of make-up on. Had literally just fallen out of bed at sparrow's fart, piled up the car with easels, canvases, paints, a battered suitcase, popped a key under a pot for the Airbnb girl and beetled over to Celia's, where she'd done the same. I hadn't even glanced in the rear-view mirror, darn it.