‘Look it up, if you don’t believe me,’ she had countered, flashing a smile to take any malice from the words.

Wife-killer, she had called him, still thinking of how he had looked at her, how he had hastily withdrawn into his house.

Quickly, she sheds her clothes, and turns the shower to full power. It is as if a rash has broken out all over her body, as if it has wormed its way beneath the layers of skin. She feels the itch communicating itself through her flesh and bones. The jets on her face sting. She keeps her eyes closed and stands perfectly still, enduring it.

And as she stands there, her thoughts leave her body and travel back. Back to the heat of another summer.

‘I came to say I’m sorry.’

She had stayed when they put her dog to sleep. In a room at the vet’s – not the usual surgery. A small room, with just an examining couch for the dog and a chair for the owner. She had stroked Bella’s soft muzzle and wondered how many animals’ lives had been extinguished in this room. How many other people’s hearts had been broken there?

Charlotte had insisted upon it. Hilary remembers the shrill vehemence of the woman, the wild flight of her fury.

‘Your bloody dog tried to savage my son!’

Still Hilary had resisted. It was a little nip. A mild tussle in the garden. The boy had been driving poor Bella crazy with a stick. She had held on for as long as she could.

‘That child’s arm,’ Greg eventually said, driven to exasperation. ‘We have no choice, Hilary. She must be put down.’

After two days of fighting it, refusing to have the dog destroyed, finally she had succumbed. She recalls now how Bella’s heavy head had lowered to the black rubber surface of the table, her features more droopy, her eyes more mournful than Hilary could ever remember them being. A low whinnying sound emerged from the dog’s throat, and Hilary put her arms around the warm body, rested her face against Bella’s velvet ears, and something ruptured deep inside her.

Afterwards, she felt numb. Greg made the arrangements with the vet for disposal while Hilary sat in the car and waited. He was kind to her on the journey home, speaking words of sympathy and reassurance but it all washed over her. She was miles away, unreachable. And when the car pulled up at the kerb, and she got out, the first thing she heard was Charlotte Woodbury laughing.