*

Rather than hurl the parish magazine into the wood burner as revenge for being rimmed by it in a kinky threesome, Aleš had been – rather disturbingly, Bridge thought – engrossed in it for the ensuing half hour while she guzzled rogaliki biscuits and enjoyed the afterglow. Both freshly showered and jogger-clad, they sprawled on a sofa each, Bridge scrolling her phone while Aleš read twenty curled A5 pages of prayers, psalms and church services.

‘There are many poems from the little church school here.’ He smiled indulgently. ‘It is very sweet to see.’

Bridge was touched that he took an interest. Their kids were still a way off school, and they’d already agreed they favoured the bigger, better-funded school in Broadbourne where their Polish cousins went.

‘Good place to work, yes? Safe place? Little part-time job is nice idea.’

She eyed him warily.

‘I read list earlier when you lie there.’ He nodded towards the table where her notes about job applications had been crumpled under their lovemaking. ‘It says something about job at school?’

‘It’s just one left-field idea I’m toying with,’ she muttered. ‘I’m not taking it too seriously if—’ She stopped herself. ‘Are you saying that you were studying my job ideas list while we were having sex?’

‘It was in my eyeline.’

‘Remind me to leave How To Be a Woman out next time.’

‘That would be strange.’ He looked at her levelly, sarcasm lost on him as usual.

‘I’m looking for something a bit more challenging, work-wise, Aleš.’

‘You have a home to look after.’

Bridge gritted her teeth. They mustn’t argue after this much sex. Not on their only night alone together. Her body was still rippling with the pleasure of it all.

Closing her eyes to count to ten, she was alarmed to find Fantasy Ash waiting there in the darkness, emerging through the gloom of a deserted schoolyard, asking if he was too late for parents’ evening. Oh, those hard, tortured silver eyes.

‘D’you think you might be ready to go again later?’ she said, turning turning to Aleš, but he’d fallen asleep with his mouth open.

*

Hazy grey twilight had thickened into darkness around the stud’s stable yards, their cobbled quadrangles golden islands in the tungstens, the surrounding fields black seas through which Pax and Luca navigated, torches bobbing.

By the time they’d brought in half a dozen big-bellied broodmares and herded youngstock back into barns, Luca was dead on his feet. Pax hadn’t uttered anything beyond snipes and monosyllables, crosser than ever because she kept disappearing to try calling her husband from the landline, only to storm back out less than a minute later. Luca waited each time, increasingly impatient. It seemed hubby was now playing the silent stand-off. It was all tactics and gameplay, ending relationships, he reflected sorely on his own rifts. Horses were far easier.

He checked on the bellyaching stallions – the new neighbours engaged in straightforward out-shouting each other, interspersed with deep, appreciative inhaling and lip-curling – then tracked down Pax in the feed room, pouring hot water over quick-soak sugar beet and sobbing silently into the steam, trying to hide it as soon as she realised he was there, pulling on brittle British politeness like a uniform. ‘Almost done!’