And yet none of that really justified ‘This marriage is over!’ did it? Wasn’t he just having fun while she was a being a miserable, buttoned-up Scrooge?

The petty row had started over fat in the gravy strainer. He wanted her to rinse it down the sink; she insisted it would block the drains, their voices sotto. Next door, Kes was elbow-deep in Lego, the Forsyths watching the Queen’s Speech – volume mercifully high because Muir stubbornly refused to wear a hearing aid. It was Mack who started ramping up the stealth fight, always more combative than she, taunting with his tea-towel matador cloak, goading and arrogant. Talking in undertones, they’d hissed and dismissed, the argument gaining momentum, the venom and despair all too soon pouring forth, hers forty percent proof and 100 per cent truth.

Within just a few short word associations, they’d moved rapidly past the plumbing faults of the eighties bungalow, through how much his parents hated the Cotswolds, touched upon the still unfinished Rectory renovation, the loathsome mobile home, Mack’s aggressive business tactics and the expensive school Kes had yet to settle in, dwelt far too long on her interfering friends, then paid lip duty to their lousy sex life, her drinking, his lack of affection, her mother. Her bloody awful mother whose ridiculously selfish behaviour had fucked up her childhood and killed her father. His words, delivered as dispassionately as a busy oncologist telling a patient they have a large tumour.

‘Maybe being married to you has helped me understand why she left him!’ Out it came, seemingly from nowhere, the first steam of the volcano erupting from beneath the calm blue ocean. The end of the marriage was the one thing she’d sworn never to even threaten, the very last thing she would ever want to do to Kes. Yet it felt like the truth the moment she said it. Breaking the seal on the pressure cooker.

‘Now that’s fucking uncalled for,’ Mack had snarled. ‘But I’m prepared to forgive you because I know how dysfunctional your family are.’ His eyes were osprey-like, unblinkingly fixed and predatory, revealing just how shocked he was. ‘Is that why you were so jealous of Mum’s lovely spread today, you daft wee bird? Those Christmases at the stud were so bloody feudal, you have no idea what it’s like to be civilised.’

Christmases in Compton Magna had been sacrosanct. Adults drunken and laughing, children riotous, music and merrymaking, horses and dogs centre stage, and so much food. Her grandmother Ann had been a glorious cook, Pax at her side, standing on a chair, her kitchen assistant, brining and basting and chopping and whisking just as tirelessly as she had for Mairi, the succulent gamey goose and deeply sweet red beef they’d brought to the table a legend.

At that moment the lonely grief of an unhappy wife had hit her like a tidal wave, carrying all that had been good about her grandparents’ marriage – their companionship, their generosity, their fierce good spirits, their shared passion for horse and country – and smashing it against the rocks of her own hard place.