‘Not done it yet.’

‘Good luck with that.’

‘I know this might not seem much, but it’s all about potential. Like Bridge says about that little job at the school.’

‘She’ll eat that place and spit it out, I reckon.’

‘She’s not that bad.’

‘For a ball-breaker.’ He was already wiping the gravy from his plate with a slice of bread. ‘It’s okay, I like her.’

‘She makes me laugh.’

‘Bit over the top, but yeah, she’s pretty lit.’

‘Pretty, too.’

His eyes levelled with hers, amused. ‘Fancy her, do you?’

‘You do, you mean,’ she teased, knowing he did.

‘Not my type.’

She gave him a mock-disbelieving look. ‘Go on, admit it, you’d love a threesome.’

He laughed. ‘I’m digging my own grave whatever I say.’ He ripped off another hunk of bread, then looked at her from an angle as he chewed it, eyes sparkling. ‘Are you serious?’

‘Gotcha!’ She knew she’d been right. ‘You fancy the arse off her.’

‘Not half as much as I fancy my wife. And I’m not sharing you with anyone, bae.’

As they ate, Carly could feel the old chemistry kicking in, his gaze on her body. He could always do this to her, muting conversations before they were started, feeding her lines from his lips and food from his fork, making her laugh with no more than a lift of his eyebrow. Strong and silent even when he was joking around, Ash really was in an exceptionally good mood.

In bed, long before their bedtime, he was more attentive than he’d been in months, taking charge, not with the usual nod to foreplay but a full-scale heads-down focus on her pleasure, all the more squirmily delicious as he told her to stay still and enjoy, his fingers and tongue finding every one of her hot spots.

Downstairs, Pricey was barking to be let out. ‘I’d better go.’ Carly slid off the bed and reached for Ash’s T-shirt to cover up and go down.

A frost was hardening. Pricey took a long time to find the right spot in the garden to do her business, tiptoeing around out of sight. Shivering with cold as she waited by the back door, Carly heard a yell above and turned, listening for sounds of one of Ash’s nightmares, instead making out tinny movie music and tyre-squeal soundtrack.

By the time she started back upstairs, Jackson was kicking off with telltale snivels as the head cold woke him, hot and tearful, his nose streaming. His nappy needed changing. Sienna woke too, red-faced and snuffly. Calpol administered, lullabies sung, she rejoined Ash.

He was awake and watching a movie on the iPad, some smash-’em-up action franchise with four battered beefcakes and a token babe. Face blue-lit, he looked up with a slow smile as she crossed the room. ‘You’re beautiful, you know that?’

She struck a Tank Girl pose. ‘Even though I’m not wearing leather biker gear with a Kalashnikov in each hand?’ She nodded at the little screen, in which the babe was dispensing with baddies, cleavage pert throughout.