This morning, with the local children starting back at school, the village was positively thrumming with recalibrated Fitbits. Spotting another kitbag on a passing car’s passenger seat, Bridge sensed the Broadbourne gym might at least be too busy for mutual ogling with Ash Turner, the past week a gauntlet-run of sweaty eye-meets in mirrors.

‘How’s the job hunt going, Bridge?’ Gill called over her shoulder.

‘Sure, I’m taking my time to find the right fit.’

‘To fit round coffee shopping and the running machine, you mean?’ said Petra, and Gill laughed, making Bridge smart, especially when Gill added, ‘Oh, to be a yummy mummy!’

‘I am not a yummy mummy – which incidentally is TOTALLY last decade. I’m a flexi-tasking mammie seeking lifestyle balance.’

‘You’ll land your dream job, Ms “Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport Office Manager of the Year 2015”,’ Petra pep-talked.

Bridge knew it had been a mistake to ask a novelist to look through her CV – which now contained fifteen adverbs and a lot of semi-colons.

Craic barged sideways past a desiccating Norwegian Fir dumped on the pavement outside Duck Pond Cottage ahead of Twelfth Night, its needles still sparkling with foil strands.

‘Ride him forwards, love!’ Mo urged.

‘I never fecking look back, me.’ Bridge maintained her sangfroid, stomach secretly churning.

What neither Petra nor Gill knew was that, later today, Bridge had an interview for the role of part-time office administrator at the village primary school. She’d sworn Mo to secrecy, anxious that she might be as overqualified for this as she’d been overeager for the last. For Job Interview Reloaded, Bridge would have to keep a cool professional head. Her mistake had been trying to run back up the career ladder instead of taking it one naughty step at a time.

As they trotted on up the short, sloped drag of Back Lane, she glanced across at her empty cottage, long since de-Christmassed, the blood-rush of relief to be outside in the fresh air wiping out the twitch of guilt that she’d dumped the kids with her sister-in-law.

‘Sous Vide fired her first team of builders, apparently.’ Petra pointed her whip at the village pub as they turned left. ‘I hear they’re so behind, the big opening might have to be candlelit. You had a lucky escape there.’

‘Sure, I told Zuckerberg and Musk as much when they were fighting over my payroll skills.’ Bridge held on tight as Craic took the scenic route in protest at the loud sound of power drills coming from The Jugged Hare.

The Bags made their way through the open gate to the set-aside field that ran alongside the Plumb Run orchards between Compton Magna and Bagot, and Bridge was grateful for the fast canter around the big strip of headland there, the wind loud in her ears, conversation impossible as she enjoyed Craic’s thundering attempt to catch the bigger and faster horses ahead.

Not telling the Bags about the interview conflicted her. She felt a degree of shame she couldn’t explain. It wasn’t snobbery, she told herself, even though the job would be a significant step down professionally. The Bags would think no differently of her whether she ran the office of Unilever or Compton Magna C of E Primary. The problem was more that Bridge was, totally unexpectedly, nervous as hell. None of her friends or family knew how much her disastrous Suzy David interview had dashed her confidence; she might have turned it into a dine-off-it comedy experience, but it was one she threw up in secret afterwards.