Her phone face lit up on the windowsill, notifications pinging. ‘At last!’

Happy New Year had a green tick beside it now. A moment later, How are you keeping? appeared in a bubble below it, followed by, O’Brien there yet? The prospect of Ronnie sharing close quarters with a cavalier young globetrotter had irritated Blair from the start. So that’s why he was marking his territory.

About to reply with a cool ‘not yet’ – flying out of Ontario today, Luca had a forty-eight-hour Dublin stop-off to see family – Ronnie realised the signal was lost again. Leave it there, she told herself firmly, pocketing her phone. He’ll get the message.

*

Having worked off more Christmas pounds cantering around the set-aside field beside the cricket pitch, Bridge felt her spirits rallying as the Bags started discussing New Year’s Resolutions.

‘Being a feck-off high flyer again by Easter,’ she told them.

‘Mine’s to meet my deadline for once,’ Petra vowed.

‘I want a new SMC,’ sighed Mo. ‘Jed Turner’s lost his sparkle since the conviction.’

The SMC – or Safe Married Crush – was a Saddle Bag rite of passage, the mainstay of the frustrated Cotswold wife, a fairy-tale fantasy about somebody out of reach, conveniently close to home.

‘Our local member has lost his too,’ muttered Gill whose comedy crush on the Fosse Vale MP – which all the Bags knew was a smokescreen for her far more heartfelt crush on local weekending theatre director, Kit Donne – had been flushed out further by inappropriate behaviour rumours on social media involving a Business Enterprise drinks party, an Arab strap and a junior secretary called Justin.

‘Let’s all nominate new ones!’ Petra’s eyes lit up.

‘Bagsy me the hunky husband from Well Cottage.’ Bridge, more competitive than carnal, laid her claim before Petra could. She’d never really got the point of the SMC, but she enjoyed beating the others to a new object of desire.

‘Say who?’ Mo loved fresh blood.

Bridge exchanged a glance with Petra, WhatsApp emojis already hot-swapped on the subject. ‘They’re renting the holiday let while Aleš builds them a house on the Broadbourne Road.’

‘Not that modern monstrosity we all objected to?’ Gill looked disapproving. ‘Replacing old Mr Noakes’s bungalow?’

‘It’s carbon-neutral, stripped-back modern living,’ Bridge insisted. The award-winning eco architect, who granted Aleš a lot of tenders, helped pay their mortgage, even if his houses all looked like shoeboxes.

‘Bet they’re bloody vegans,’ Mo shuddered.

‘Excellent SMC choice, Bridge,’ Petra clicked approvingly. ‘Think young Mel Gibson, ladies.’

‘Ew!’ Bridge recoiled. ‘Put me off him, why don’t you?’

‘Young. Mad Max era but without the mullet. Heartbreakingly sexy eyes. Builds bespoke aircraft.’

‘How d’you know that?’ she asked jealously.

‘We met them at Rowles’s drinks party.’

Bridge scowled. Petra somehow always managed to be Prima Bag: hers was the biggest house and family (albeit with a barely-there marriage); she was a social butterfly who walked dogs with aristocratic stud owner, Ronnie Percy, and flirted with the local farming heartthrob (even if Petra wanted to sack Bay Austen as her SMC, he remained the sexiest man in the village); she was excitingly careered up (even if she grumbled that her books were no longer stocked in Tesco), and she looked like Nigella, albeit in her curvier days. Now she’d staked out the Well Cottage hunk.