U OK, Pax hun? came the reply

Scrolling up, she realised she’d sent a message to ‘Mackenzie’s Mummy’, added to contacts for a recent party RSVP, an oversharing PTA heavyweight at Kes’s school.

The state of the Forsyths’ marriage would be all over the mummy mafia before daybreak.

Happy New Year! she typed, then deleted it. That was surely against the trade descriptions act. There was nothing happy about this one.

*

Bridge was already in a onesie and dressing gown, wood burner glowing, wine poured, cats Barack and Michelle curling around on the windowsill behind her. She’d sent WhatsApp video messages to Aleš and the kids in Poland – the Internet in his family’s rural house wasn’t good enough to live-stream – and then donned noise-cancelling headphones to wipe out next door’s shrill laughter and nineties rock playlist that could penetrate even three feet of sandstone. She was now trying to get to grips with an audiobook she’d lost her place in more than once whilst falling asleep recently. It was a gothic horror recommended by Petra and something extremely unpleasant was about to happen to a couple having adulterous sex in a tapestried bedchamber.

The cats springing off the windowsill behind her, fur on end, made her start and look over her shoulder.

A pale hand was pressed to the glass pane, a mask of a face peering in, black-rimmed eyes huge.

Bridge screamed, which in noise-cancelling headphones was a strange first, like singing underwater.

The mask smiled and the hand waved.

She knew Carly Turner by sight, although they’d barely exchanged more than a few words, which was odd given they had children much the same age. Bridge rarely ventured out with hers in the village, taking them instead into Broadbourne or Chipping Hampton to Tumble Tots, Water Babies and Jo Jingles, to catch up over coffee with NCT friends or to spend time with their cousins and her Polish sister-in-law in Micklecote. Carly, meanwhile, pushed hers miles around the local footpaths in a double buggy and baby backpack, recently accompanied by a scary-looking dog, always stopping for ages in gateways if there were horses there so she and the kids could fuss them. She cut a recognisable figure with her many c-shaped tattoos and slim, road-hardened physique. When Bridge opened the door, she realised Carly was dressed in a clingy, artfully slashed tube of red Lycra that would make anyone bigger than a size six look fat, shoulders inadequately caped in fun fur, her teeth chattering.

Her painted eyes rolled apologetically. ‘I’ve been sent round to invite you to a shit party.’

‘Come in, queen, you’ll catch your death.’

Carly dived inside gratefully, the cats curling around her ankles like mobile leg-warmers. ‘Look at your lovely fire. It’s much nicer in here than Flynn’s place. All he’s got there is home entertainment and recliner sofas.’

‘Stay and have a drink,’ Bridge offered, grateful for the company and curious to get some low-down on the bad-boy farrier next door. ‘I’m not leaving this house tonight.’