‘What you want to do is frankly your—’ She stopped, a knife between every rib. I want to go, Mummy. Kes hadn’t said that he wanted to go with his grandparents at all. She’d been the one to jump to that conclusion, flustered by their certainty, by imaginary Oliver.

She covered her face, reliving his tears and confusion. He had even begged her to come too. Overwhelmed, overtired, overstimulated Kes. It was past his teatime. It was cold. There were lots of strangers here. Her humiliation folded in and in, a paper spill ready to burn. ‘I’m the worst mother.’

She felt dizzy and sick, ready to run, yet grateful that Luca was a wall in front of her.

‘You’re a bloody good mother,’ he insisted. ‘You love your son more than the world. Now toughen up and love yourself.’ For a moment his forehead was almost resting against hers as he tipped his head to be heard over the approaching crowd, a waterfall of curls ticking her brow. ‘Right this minute, you want to run home and drink until you’re numb.’

‘You’re wrong,’ she lied. I’ll be home soon. There’s plum gin.

‘I have a drink right here.’ He stepped back.

‘I’m fine.’ She’d never felt this deep a craving.

‘I’ll go first, shall I?’

Taking her hands from her face, she saw the cup was at his lips.

‘Stop that!’

Luca offered her the other, eyes unblinking. ‘On the count of three?’

‘What are you doing?’ She made to knock the raised cup out of his hand, but he whipped it away too fast.

‘I’m coming with you on this bender whether you like it or not.’

‘Get a grip.’

‘One: I’ve not played the violin sober in years for a start. Two: I need a drink. Three…’ Luca shut the argument down, draining the cup while Pax watched, bewildered.

‘Why do that?’

He proffered the second cup. ‘You’re not drinking alone tonight, Pax. And if anything’s going to stop you, it’s seeing me langers. I’m a seriously annoying drunk.’

‘You’re seriously annoying.’ She glared at him, his face, just visible in the lantern and firelight spilling from the other end of the orchard, a flickering mask. ‘I do know what you’re playing at here, Luca.’

‘And what is that?’

‘Making a moral sacrifice to prove a point.’ She waved an accusing arm, anger bated. The wassail procession was finally in the orchard proper and whooping its way towards its first tree. Even in the dark far corner, she now had to shout to be heard. ‘You’re playing truth or dare, aren’t you?’

‘And which will it be?’

‘You already know my truth!’ As she shouted it, the wassailers hushed to listen to the chair of the parish council make his welcoming introduction, Pax’s ‘know my truth!’ carrying evangelically across the orchard.

‘Which is?’ Luca asked quietly.

God, he was milking this.

‘I’m a secret drinker,’ she hissed obligingly. ‘We’re good at secrets in my family; my entire childhood was built on one, as it turns out. Mine is bottles of vodka in the tea-towel drawer.’ She paused to breathe, determined not to cry or to let her voice climb scales, pushing the letters and Kes’s departure from her mind. ‘This stupid drinking game is just one of your holier-than-thou gestures.’