She removed the pillow and looked back over their messages. They were innocent enough, on the surface:

Thank you. I hope you’re having a good weekend? xxx

She’d replied last night, around 11 p.m., when she was drunk on the sights of Paris and friendship; they’d shared two bottles of wine, Nina attentively topping up their glasses, but Alice felt as though she’d drunk two bottles herself.

Three kisses! And it wasn’t even the weekend yet when she’d sent it. Lordy, you sound so desperate, she thought. But then she’d woken to this photo. Mr Hough on the beach, his wetsuit peeled down to his waistline. She gulped, following the lines of muscle definition downwards to a smattering of hair. Briefly, she imagined licking the salty sea water from his skin, the coolness of the droplets and the heat of her tongue… He hadn’t mentioned going to Cornwall this weekend. In fact, he’d said he didn’t have much on. An impulse decision. Imagine living like that, so freely. She thought of Nina. She thought of Paris. She thought of how trapped she had become in her own life, entwined in PTA meetings and fundraising initiatives and sports kits. She wasn’t free. And she wasn’t happy. Had she been unhappy for a long time? It had worsened as Charlotte’s problems had, but was it there before that? This creeping realisation that the life she had dreamed of didn’t feel the way she expected it to?

She tried to call Ted to check in on the children but he didn’t answer and instead sent her a text message as soon as she hung up: ‘All okay here. Hope you’re having fun X.’ Saturday mornings were hectic. Football, cricket, gymnastics. She almost texted him back reminding him to take snacks but stopped herself.

She hadn’t always been this way. She used to be spontaneous and ambitious like her friends. Ted spoke of Nina in a tone of almost awe these days at what she was achieving with La City Pâtisserie. The expansion plans and expected return of investment to his firm. It irked her. For one, it had been her idea for him to invest and for another, what did he think Alice was doing all day? She was CEO of her own family office, which Ted was willingly blind to: the hours she invested in food procurement and preparation for five (all with differing catering requirements), the constant churn of forms for school, sports clubs, Brownies, Beavers, the paediatrician (whole days lost to admin and forms), the logistics of moving three small humans with their own (strong) wills and desires around in circles, at slightly different times. Drop-offs, pickups, play dates. The £1s that had to be remembered and collected: Wear Something Purple Day, Endangered Animals Day, International Day. Being there for them. Listening to their concerns about where Bluey, the half-dead fledgling they’d found in the garden, was now, consoling them he was probably with his mummy and daddy and not in the shallow grave she’d dug.