Scrabbling round onto her knees, she tried to shake him awake to try to stop it, breathing in his ear. ‘There’s no war, Ash. You’re home.’

‘Home!’ He thrashed the other way, still asleep. ‘Can’t lose this fight.’

‘There is no fight here.’

‘Honour fight,’ he murmured, coming up through layers of memories and distortion. ‘Jihadi.’

‘You’re out of the army, Ash,’ Carly reassured him. Then he said it again and she realised her mistake.

‘Jed and me. Burns Night. Big fight on Burns Night.’ He sat up, rubbing his face groggily. ‘Gotta beat the bastard.’

‘What fight?’

Removing the heels of his palms from sleepy, reddened eyes, he looked surprised to find her sitting beside him, her bedside lamp still on, the feminist book raised in one hand like a court witness with a Bible.

‘What fight?’ she repeated quietly.

‘King of the gypsies.’

She closed her eyes and groaned. A big fight between traveller men, bare-fisted and brutal, the Turners traditionally used it to settle a family dispute (and make a lot of money on the side).

‘I have to do it. It’s family honour, Carl.’

‘What about this family, our family?’ She slammed the book down to emphasise the point.

He picked it up, eager for distraction, looking at the cover. ‘What’s with Lily Munster?’

She snatched it back. ‘It’s frank, funny feminism.’ That’s how Bridge had described it to her, with an added ‘fecking’ before feminism.

‘Is it now?’ He looked amused, which she guessed was the point. His nightmare was abating, the veins on his neck already coming down, the sweat drying.

‘I don’t want you to fight, Ash,’ she said plainly.

‘We’re grown-ups, bae. I don’t much like you reading frank funny feminists, but I’m not going to stop you.’

‘It’s hardly the same thing!’

‘Yeah, well, I’ve changed my mind about Bridge.’ He rolled away again, presenting a big, tattooed shoulder. ‘You can tell her to steer the fuck clear of me. And my wife.’

*

‘She may be the face której nie mogę zapomnieć…’ Charles Aznavour had nothing on Aleš, who had gone to the Polish supermarket in Broadbourne after work – via the pub with his brother – and returned in full voice, singing his way through the soundtracks from Richard Curtis movies while he prepared a congratulatory meal to celebrate Bridge’s new job.

Aleš was a famously slow, messy, entertaining cook. To Bridge, who was only staying awake thanks to a handful of caffeine pills washed down with a bottle of Bull’s Blood, it seemed hours after starting with ‘Gimme Some Loving’, an onion and a chopping knife in the kitchen – toasting her throughout with refilled glasses of Źubrówka: ‘My clever career wife!’ – that he finally danced to the table with a pot of bigos, singing ‘Love Is All Around’. There, lifting pot lid and vodka glass simultaneously, he announced through the rising steam, ‘My gift to you, kochanie!’

Grateful for his signature dish of porky sauerkraut, she quashed the suspicion that he’d be far less effusive if she’d just landed Head of Human Resources at Jaguar Land Rover. He didn’t even mind when she broke it to him that she’d been asked to go in tomorrow. ‘It’s their Ofsted inspection.’