‘Sorry, I was miles away.’ He gives Godiva’s nose one last stroke. She is quiet now. Calm. Ready for him to check her over. He prefers to work this way. No speeding in and out. Cramming as many appointments as he can into one day. He respects the horses and they respect him.

Once he’s finished his examination, he follows Stephanie to the kitchen to wash his hands. They are rough and calloused, ‘worker’s hands’, Lucy calls them. The water is scalding, steam rising and misting the window, but his skin is so thick it doesn’t burn as he rinses off the pine-scented soap, which reminds him of Christmas trees. There’s a swelling in his throat as he remembers chiming bells outside the boys’ bedrooms late on Christmas Eve. Taking bites out of the carrots they had laid out for Rudolph, leaving teeth marks in the vegetables. Scrawling a note using his left hand so his writing was unrecognizable: Thanks for the mince pie and glass of milk and the snacks for my reindeers. Love Santa X

‘What’s next for Godiva?’ Stephanie asks.

Aidan explains and her face relaxes. The farmer’s wife should also know better than to become over-attached to animals, but like Aidan she does anyway.

‘I can’t thank you enough. You’re a good man.’ She nods once at Aidan. ‘A kind man.’

Aidan has finished up the rest of his calls and is on his way home when his mobile buzzes a text.

Her.

His insides twist painfully. He had promised himself last night that he was ending it. Tyler spotting them together really brought it home to him how easily he could be found out. The consequences if he were. He thought he had made himself clear. He loves his family, he doesn’t want to lose them.

He ponders over what to say, his thumbs composing and then deleting text after text. Eventually, he says, Half an hour. He will tell her again, face-to-face, that it has to stop.

All of it.

It should never have started.

He pulls into the car park first. While he waits, he messages Lucy and tells her he’s been called out to Godiva – she won’t know he went there earlier – but he won’t be long. On the end of the text he writes I love you but he deletes this part before he sends it. Telling each other how they felt used to come as naturally as breathing, but they’ve stopped lately. Their energies focused on Kieron with little left for anything else, for each other, but even if he doesn’t write the words out it’s ever present, the enormity of love that he’s only felt a few times in his life: his parents, his wife, his children.