There was a creaking of plastic chairs as everyone sat up to listen.

Is she in the right group? Pax wondered.

‘We both drink a lot,’ Monique went on. ‘I mean a lot. Stiff gins at six, chin-chin, with supper is maybe three bottles of wine, more afterwards, then brandy. More when we eat with his parents, more still if we eat out, which we do a lot. He classifies himself as a heavy drinker, I classify myself as dependent. On alcohol. And on him.’

Maybe she was in the right group. Pax could feel her face flaming. Luca was looking at her questioningly. She mouthed I know her. This time he understood with a quick nod. Then he studied at Monique’s profile curiously, eyebrows shooting up as he turned back to Pax and mouthed I know her too.

Monique played to a rapt audience. ‘My husband is like a puppy, always, but he is also very much a one-person dog. Nobody matches up to the one that broke his heart. She was his first love. Ah, sooo sweet!’ The bitterness of her sarcasm sucked air from the room.

Pax couldn’t look at Luca. Her face was blazing now, the tight chest suffocating.

‘Our marriage was always on an understanding: I get a nice life, good horses, I must hostess well and always look great, we have beautiful children and once or twice a year we have drunk sex, you know? Mostly it’s better with other people, like my boys. But they are threatening to leave.’

Pax remembered Bay mentioning Monique’s groom and his boyfriend, the reason he’d bought the Compton-bred mare back from Blair. ‘Only way to stop her staff from walking out is to buy them presents every time she makes them cry.’

‘But now I have a problem.’ She licked her lips. ‘I need a drink before breakfast, okay, to stop my hands shaking. I have to drink maybe two, three shots before I get on a horse. My husband has been fucking our nanny, which I do not like. Our children love her, and that’s a messy thing, a painful thing. Now he no longer wants her, and he is doing everything to avoid her until I agree to fire her, but I cannot look after them alone.

‘I lost my driving licence last week…’ She stopped again, another sharp breath. ‘That’s so bad for me.’ Her voice was getting lower, thicker with emotion. ‘My husband was very nice about it. He’s always nice. It makes me sad sometimes because he wants to be loved very much. But he is not a caring man and I am not a good wife. I am forty, so why do I sweat and why do I shake and why do I think about drink all the time and why I am scared…’

Pax slipped from her chair and fled for the door. Her chest was in a vice.

*

Ronnie and Kes had a sofa, a roaring fire, a dog on each lap, a Stetson and feathered war bonnets on their respective heads, and Toy Story on the DVD player. It was well past his bedtime, they’d eaten their body weight in popcorn and Pink Panther biscuits and it was – according to Kes – the Best Night Ever.