‘Do you think he’s off the phone yet?’ she asked eventually.

‘Depends if his married stalker is threatening to tell her husband,’ Ronnie suggested, but Pax’s dark humour fell flat repeated back.

‘Your expert field, not mine.’ Pax squinted at the cottage. ‘You need a second landline.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘It’s two hours since Mack called.’

‘I thought you didn’t want to talk to him?’

‘I don’t. But he told you he’d ring back, didn’t he? He’s not answering his phone. What if something’s happened to Kes?’

‘It’s New Year’s Day, they’re doing family things.’ Like us, she thought wryly as she gathered two brooms and handing one across. ‘Kes will be fine. Missing you, but fine.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Sherbet.’ It was an old Percy saying, one Anne had coined from a gambling-mad Irish gardener, an abbreviation of ‘sure bet’. Seeing Pax’s half-smile of recognition as they swept cobbles side by side, Ronnie felt better. Was it terrible of her to admit that she was grateful for this rare time together, however awful the crisis? Its intimacy was a little foundation stone.

‘Maybe I should call him again?’ Pax fretted. ‘He has no idea my mobile’s dead. There are bound to be voicemails and messages I can’t access.’

‘He knows you’re here and he has this number.’ Ronnie spotted the cob’s bridle abandoned on a hook and picked it up. ‘Let him cool off.’

‘Really?’ Pax followed her into the tack room. ‘No, I definitely should call.’

‘Pax, when your father and I separated, I did exactly this, and it’s—’

‘I am not you! I will never be like you! I can’t lose Kes. I can’t! Shit!’ She turned away, mopping tears with her sleeve, batting away the hand Ronnie tried to put on her back, talking through gritted teeth. ‘I j-just need to use a phone. And I need to stop bloody crying.’

Ronnie stepped back. Pax was right; the situations were very different. She’d run away with a lover on a madcap whim, light-hearted and impetuous, believing that she’d be reunited with her children within days. Having grown up in the lengthening shadow of its consequences, Pax had clung on to marriage until her fingers bled.

‘Luca must have finished that call. Let’s check, shall we?’ She found herself caught between talking to the toddler she’d left behind and the grown woman so like her younger self.

‘You go on ahead.’ Pax mopped her eyes with her sleeves. ‘I don’t want him to see me like this.’

Even thirty years after being married to an alcoholic, Ronnie sensed straight away that Pax had spotted a drink. Johnny had hidden bottles in hunting boots, feed bins, gutters and every coat pocket going by the end.

Her eyes alighted on the hunting flask, still in its leather holder buckled to the cob’s saddle. She fished it out with a casual, ‘I’ll just take this back.’

Pax cleared her throat as Ronnie hurried out, tipping the contents in a planter as soon as she was through the arch.