Knott followed her round, yawning and trying to settle down to sleep whenever she stood still for a few moments, then wearily waking and tracking her down when she moved on. She moved on a lot, flitting from station to station, extracting, folding, neatening what was left behind.

Throughout, she tried to imagine she was wearing blinkers, going straight to the drawers and cupboards containing the things she needed, not letting herself look around the fibreglass and metal caravan that had been home for two years. It had been left immaculately tidy as always, Pax’s natural propensity for mess rigidly controlled during her marriage. She’d been the last to leave the building; there were no surprises here. Holding herself together was made easier because Kes was tidied away too, his toys out of sight as usual, his room door shut. She wouldn’t let herself go in there.

She took some washing out of the dryer and put it away, emptied the tiny countertop dishwasher and took down the cards and minimalist Christmas decorations, one to recycling, the other boxed back in the shipping container on the drive. She had to talk herself out of going outside to cut a winter spray to put on the coffee table. She wanted to leave it perfect, no room for error.

An outsider looking in might have seen a perfectly normal-looking domestic scene, but Pax wasn’t remotely calm in her head: a thrash metal anthem was playing on a loop, her chest so full of beating heart it felt as though it was going to burst open her rib cage like saloon doors. She wanted to kick or break everything of Mack’s that she saw.

She took a little food, mostly things with the shortest sell-by dates and the fruit nobody else would eat, leaving the lion’s share for Mack’s return. When. If. When.

He hadn’t picked up any of her calls. Anger and paranoia curdling, she resisted an almost overwhelming urge to take his new golf clubs and beat up his precious sports’ bike.

Instead, forensically efficient, she extracted all the hidden vodka bottles, empty and full, and buried them as deeply in the skip on the drive as she could. Her throat burned throughout, tears boiling unwept behind her sinuses. It felt like burying a family pet, the dog she’d hugged through her marriage.

Finally, she gathered up her laptop – not that it would be much use at the stud farm. She knew she should take advantage of the shack’s speedy Internet to look up all sorts of things first, but she could only think of one: she looked up the number for a divorce lawyer.

*

‘Sloneczko, moje szczęście, kocjane… you are on fire!’ groaned Aleš ecstatically.

Smiling, Bridge closed her eyes, partly because it felt so good, and partly because she never really liked the sight of her husband’s orgasm face, which seemed to transport him elsewhere, this other-wordly Aleš whose all-consuming pleasure was all his own. Hers was always a mutual thing, even if she was helping it along, a duet he liked to share, to watch, to help play its final note. His was a trumpet solo, his eyes losing focus from hers, thoughts retreating into pure sensation. For that split second of his carnal firework show, Bridge felt as though he was inside himself, not her, and she could be anyone.