As they drove up the sunken lane towards the Comptons, another car came towards them.

‘He is closer to passing space.’ Aleš drove on bullishly, forcing the other car to swiftly reverse, even though Bridge knew it would have been much easier for them to go back to a nearby gateway. Aleš always followed too closely, radiator to radiator, intimidating drivers into zig-zagging into the verges.

This one was far better than most, and as they stalked it at close range, Bridge recognised Pax’s little Noddy car. She’d turned away to look out of the rear window, but there was no mistaking that mane of red hair. There was a passenger sitting beside her, his face dipping in and out of shadow as they bounced over the potholes. Hugely handsome, all high cheeks and square chin. Some women had all the luck.

Bridge leant forwards, peering closer.

‘Oh my fecking life!’ she breathed, reaching straight for her phone as the Noddy car swung into the recess in the bank and they flashed past, already WhatsApping the Saddle Bags.

*

The Chipping Hampton Friends Meeting House was tricky to find, impossible to park near and challenging to access. Keen to protect its inscrutability, a Bardswolds Alcoholics Anonymous meeting was harder to track down than the VIP rooms of a London private members’ club. And like a private members club, many of the participants knew each other on the outside. When Pax and Luca finally located the room, ten minutes late, Pax peered through its small glass panel. Her eyes widened, already recognising a startling number: an architect she’d worked with, a friend’s nanny, a banker with a lisp she’d met at a dinner party recently, someone she’d been at prep school with and a comedian turned children’s author who had bought one of the farmhouses that she and Mack had renovated. Which in a group of fewer than twenty made it less of an anonymous gathering, more of a reunion.

‘You ready?’ Luca whispered, looking more than a little tense himself.

She nodded.

Only a few looked round as they sidled their way into the second row of the small circle of seats. Most were focussed on a thin-haired man in a crumpled suit telling the group how he’d relapsed over New Year, staying up late to binge drink a bottle of Drambuie, the leftover amaretto from the tiramisu and several craft gin miniatures. ‘I nearly stopped at the quince, but I was at rock bottom.’

Pax stole another look at Luca, almost unrecognisable without his beard, his anonymity guaranteed tonight at least. Several other women in the circle were sneaking peeks at him too, she noticed. He was really quite hard not to look at.

Scrutinised by the friend’s nanny, Pax was grateful for the oversized knitted slouch hat that covered her trademark hair, scarf wound high over her coat, her glasses further cover. Now she was in the room, she also spotted one of the semi-retired teachers from Kes’s old school and the ears of the blonde woman with the tight bun sitting directly in front of her also looked suspiciously familiar, one fringed with multiple high piercings.