The trio were crashing a lot of plastic Duplo about, buzzcut Ellis ordering his siblings to join in his battle, toddler Sienna mewling a pacifist protest that sounded like ‘dun unto’, baby Jackson banging a red block against his own head whilst still dribbling on an almond biscuit, all three reminding Bridge that other people’s children were never as enchanting as your own and that she still had quite a bad headache.

‘Was Ronnie’s daughter at the stud?’ She cast around for a change of subject, remembering the tearful redhead in the car yesterday, an image she’d found hard to shake afterwards. ‘Pax?’

‘Snooty cow.’ Carly shrugged. ‘Her type looks straight through our type, don’t they?’

Affronted to be bracketed in the see-through sector, Bridge felt the extra-sweet calories curdle yet more. ‘She’ll never fecking look through me.’

‘Go you!’ Carly grinned. ‘That’s what I like about you. You’re like the sun. Nobody throws shade on you.’

Bridge conceded the point, gratefully watching Carly demolish the biscuits, and they shared indiscreet witchy truths about the villagers they disliked most, from the earnestly dull parish counsellors to the flakily disloyal weekenders, their wrath deliciously vicious.

Soon slipper-stamping with delight as Carly described the worst of the yummy mummies on the school run – ‘Don’t you dare let that put you off working there: they need you to take them down a peg or two’ – Bridge vaguely remembered declaring that she was going to apply for a part-time job at the village school. Surely Carly remembered she was talking to a woman who had once run a team of twenty from a fifth-floor triple-aspect mezzanine office before motherhood and mediocracy had stolen her chutzpah? She’d definitely mentioned it last night. A lot.

‘What do I want with a lollipop-lady office job?’ she scoffed. ‘I’m aiming for the fecking headship!’

‘You’re hilarious.’ Carly gave her a you-wish look.

Bridge tried not to feel affronted, telling herself she was only posing undercover as a village mum while she plotted world domination.

They then spent a brief shift on their knees, gathering Duplo, de-snotting and nappy changing before making a second batch of coffees.

‘Can’t tell you how glad I am you spared me that lame party last night,’ Carly confided as they sank back into the sofas, unleashing her sharp tongue with descriptions of Flynn’s posh student girlfriend and her mates and their ABC outfits.

Chippy, observant and mercilessly critical, she brought out the black-humoured cynic in Bridge. ‘Face it, we’re a lot further through the alphabet than they are. I’m RST – Red Bull, Spanx, Tit-tape.’

‘That is so sad!’ Carly’s sleepy eyes radiated sympathy, and Bridge realised she’d dropped her pearls of wisdom down a bottomless well of Smart Water, G-strings and nipple daisies.

Her phone vibrated on the coffee table with a new message.

‘What’s wrong with Spanx?’ she said as she reached for it.

‘I blame those ladies you ride with,’ Carly was chiding. ‘They’re well old school, they are.’