Maggie took a deep breath and spoke to her reflection. ‘Come on, you! Woman up, you’re a long time dead.’

She tried to recall the face of her late husband, to hear his voice. She couldn’t. Hadn’t been able to for some time. He was gone and she was alive and free. Tonight would be a trial run. She would have one port and lemon and then ask Reg to walk her back home. Then she would leave the curlers out tonight and in the morning Eric might look at her through new eyes, might decide to take his cup of tea indoors, instead of on the step, give Annie O’Prey something to really talk about. She had been living only half a life, all this time. Tears filled her eyes for the children she had never known. How had she let this happen?

She thought of Eric’s face, which sprang to her mind with no effort whatsoever. She thought of the kindness in his eyes, and she knew she was a wicked woman, but just the once, just the once, was that really wicked? And as soon as she had allowed that thought to run riot in her mind, she no longer cared. Whatever happened, it would be worth the confession at mass the following day and she could say, ‘I have sinned, Father, and it will never happen again.’ Because it really would be just the once.

She heard the rattle on the back gate, Cindy and Reg, bang on time to escort her for her first night ever in the pub as a single woman. ‘I’ll be home in an hour,’ she said to the statue of the Virgin Mary on mantelpiece, as she placed the guard over the fire. In the flickering of the flames, the Holy Mother frowned down at her and Maggie knew it – but for the first time in her life, she didn’t care…

*

Eric patted the money in his pocket and glanced down at his polished boots. Gladys wasn’t as sharp as she thought she was; she had been to the stables twice to berate him and hadn’t even noticed he wasn’t wearing his wellies. He patted Daisy Bell, slid the bolt on the stable door as silently as he could and tiptoed across the yard and out of the back gate. In a valiant act of defiance, he was off to the pub to take up Cindy’s invitation to join her and Reg. And one thing he was sure of was that Gladys was all about appearances. She would rather die than be one of those women who sent another man into the pub to turf her own out.