‘Vanilla?’ Aleš offered, making her feel ‘meh’ again because it wasn’t a word they usually used. Missionary if they were being technical, you go on top was her trying to sell the idea, most often when she was half-asleep and they fumbled their way towards it in the dead of night.

But this was daylight. Upstairs, their bed had eight alternative interview outfits spread out across it. Both cats were curled on top last time Bridge had looked. Aleš was very pernickety about banishing them during coitus. She didn’t want to evict them, let alone start hanging up clothes.

‘Why vanilla?’ She weaved towards him. ‘Why not pistachio?’

He looked briefly intrigued. ‘I like vanilla.’

‘Strawberry?’

‘Vanilla.’ His top came off with Baltic aplomb.

‘Rum and raisin.’

‘Vanilla.’ He stepped out of his trousers.

‘Mint choc chip.’

‘Actually, that is a sex act, kochanie.’

‘Is it up our street?’ She was briefly thrilled.

‘Something with toothpaste and anal.’ He looked hopeful.

‘Ew. How do you know these things?’

‘I have a mind that cannot forget. Let’s vanilla,’ he indicated at his watch. He was fully naked and at full mast while she was still in the first interview suit she’d tried on. ‘I have quantity surveyor coming in half an hour. You have job to get.’

And in that moment, Bridge felt the love that fired each cell in her body. Aleš remembered every birthday in the family, just as he remembered how many sugars every casual labourer who worked with them liked in their tea, the names of wives, and the sweet spots on her body however vanilla the sex.

She felt plugged into the mains. She reached for him: warm satin skin, her thumb circling faster as he hardened beneath her touch, anticipation bubbling between her legs. ‘Hands only. And if you want to touch any part of me, you’re washing yours first, Chilli-Wrap Man.’

‘Vanilla for dessert.’ He reversed her towards the sofa.

‘If I get this job,’ she told him, ‘there’s no ice-cream flavour beyond reach.’

*

‘Ash know you’re here?’ Flynn asked Carly as she hung onto a nippy pony who didn’t want his feet trimmed, her hood battering the side of her head in the wind.

‘Course.’

‘That chip on his shoulder turned blue, has it?’

‘Meaning?’

‘You fraternising with the village pelf, the wallets.’ His brows hiked, tossing the rock hair, rasp aloft. ‘Not like a Turner.’

‘You’d be surprised.’ Ash never objected to her doing extra little jobs for Petra, whose generosity meant the Turners were dressed in designer cast-offs, had a huge kids’ DVD collection and more books than they knew what to do with. It helped that Petra didn’t mind Carly bringing her children along. In the tack room behind her, Jackson was snoozing in the buggy. Sienna had curled up in a quilted horse rug with a spaniel watching Peppa Pig on Carly’s smartphone while Pou slept off an exhausting session jumping around on lily pads.

‘She’s been good to me and Ash, Petra has,’ she told Flynn.