‘My mam spent years trying to force me and my sister Bernie on the Dooley brothers because she thought their dad being an accountant gave them good prospects. One’s in prison for GBH and the other’s living as a woman now. Oh, a soul could die of fecking thirst round here. You’re buying the first round, are you not, Luca?’ Her eyes batted mock-coquettishly.

‘Sure.’ Pax could see the easy smile lighting up in the gathering darkness.

‘I’ll help,’ offered Carly, abandoning her buggy to Bridge, Jackson asleep in it, Sienna toddling between the trees with Flavia in a shrieking game of peekaboo. ‘Keep an eye will you, Bridge?’

‘Everywhere I look, I see triangles,’ Bridge sighed, leaning into Pax for warmth. ‘Must be the fecking bunting. You okay, queen?’

‘I’m good.’ Pax looked at the bunting, only seeing her father’s handwriting proclaiming love. He’d been so terribly in love. More than she’d known in her own lifetime.

Keep thinking about something else. Don’t think about it.

‘That Luca fancies the arse off you,’ Bridge whispered. ‘Doesn’t take his eyes off you.’

Reluctant to explain that he was here to stop her drinking sly apple brandies while in charge of her five-year-old, Pax said nothing. Her thoughts were being ransacked, memories shredded. Was the love between Johnny and Lester the reason her mother had run away? Had she known about it before her own ill-fated love affair?

Don’t think about it.

‘Here comes the Clodfather. Wassail must be about to get going,’ Bridge announced cheerfully as the Comptons’ unofficial Vito Corleone, ‘Social’ Norm Turner, was charioteered in amid a swarm of family heavyweights, his huge tombstone torso swathed in blankets, arm raised in greeting, oxygen tanks to either side of his wheelchair like jet packs.

‘Does he really still rule the roost round here?’ asked Pax. Even her grandfather had been wary of Norm.

‘Put it this way, if he doesn’t like someone in the village, they don’t stay long,’ Bridge breathed. ‘Luca had better fecking fiddle well.’

They watched in fascination as, on the other side of the paddock, Carly introduced Luca to the hard-muscled, silver-eyed mob headed up by her sister-in-law Janine at the handlebars of the wheelchair, a bulldog in long black hair extensions, nail art glittering. She was giving Luca a thorough cross-examination by the look of it. His eyes flitted back across the field to where Pax and Bridge were standing.

‘What’s the story between you two?’ Bridge persisted.

‘There’s no story.’

‘Like feck there’s not. I have a nose for desire. Grab him while you can. There’s others will if you don’t.’

‘I only walked out of my marriage a fortnight ago,’ Pax whispered, shocked by Bridge’s directness.

‘Which means you’ve been looking around for ages.’ Bridge was unapologetic. ‘C’mon, I’d barely unpacked my honeymoon bikini. We all do it; I’ve friends who make a hobby of it. They’re all knocking on, mind you.’

Pax shook her head. Whilst it was true that she’d desired men other than Mack for a very long time, they were all abstract facsimiles, her natural default forged a long time ago, her type hardwired. And it wasn’t Luca’s blond-lashed, smiling kindness, surely? ‘Kes is my priority.’