*

‘And there were HUGE turtles that went RIGHT over my head and Grandforce said that they have existed for two hundred million YEARS which is even longer than him…’

Steering the Noddy car back up the stud’s long driveway, Pax checked the dash clock, grateful to see she’d have time to settle Kes before she had to go out again. Mercifully her evisceration threats had been entirely unnecessary, the Forsyths ready and waiting with their grandson clutching a plush stingray while their son clutched a solicitor’s email.

‘My chap suggests we draw up a calendar.’ Mack had tried to maintain a pompous higher ground. ‘Save any more,’ he’d cleared his throat, ‘mistakes.’

Helen Beadle’s unequivocal and cross reaction to the wassail seizure seemed to have finally brought some semblance of cooperation. Walking them to the car, Mack had also admitted with tight-jawed reluctance that the ‘Scotland Plan’ was going to be delayed on his part by some interest in the barn conversions, the business being less dead in the water than he’d imagined.

‘So I’ll be here for mediation,’ he assured her with an attempt at a conciliatory smile.

She turned into the arrivals yard, parking alongside the rusted Subaru that had once belonged to her grandfather.

A chisel-jawed man was talking to her mother in the glow of the first archway, good-looking enough to make her double take.

She peered at him, vaguely recognising the beanie and Puffa jacket. ‘Who’s that?’

‘Silly Mummy!’ Kes was already unbuckling his seat belt. ‘It’s Luca. I’m going to show him my turtle.’

Pax stared, astonished, pulses fizzing like Sodastreams.

The beard had gone.

*

Returning from a two-hour marathon in Evesham’s Tesco superstore, Bridge gritted her teeth in the passenger seat beside her husband, listening to The Wheels On The Bus playlist as their children gradually re-entered Earth’s atmosphere from cosmic tantrum to sleepy trance in the booster seats behind them.

Aleš always insisted on shopping with them, despite never grasping that there was a time limit attached to taking small children into supermarkets which didn’t allow for him to choose individual onions with slow perfectionism, haggle with the man at the fresh fish counter, or linger lovingly by the Polish food section remembering a recipe his grandmother used to cook. By the time they’d reached the tills with a double-toddler-seat trolley stacked to chin height, everyone within a fifty-metre radius longed for ear defenders. She was only prepared to forgive him because he’d put in chocolates, pink champagne and fillet steak, still on his absolute best behaviour after last night.

‘And if we buy a plot to build a house it will definitely be big enough to keep Craic there?’ she confirmed for the umpteenth time, holding her phone out to record it for posterity this time.

‘I guarantee it, kochanie.’

She smiled, kissing her fingers and reaching across to place them lovingly on his bristly head. Much as Bridge despised male violence, her husband’s aborted fight with Ash Turner had provided fantastic domestic leverage, as well as being strangely stimulating. Two men sparring over her honour had given her a secret frisson. The sex had been spectacular afterwards, the Mazurs back in full cry.