‘Don’t blame you.’ Carly flopped on the harlequin-striped sofa by the wood burner, pulling a big sheepskin cushion onto her knee and gazing around. ‘It’s amazing.’

Bridge’s bold taste and Aleš’s love of Polish folk art meant their tiny cottage was a riot of colour: the walls that weren’t natural limestone were painted with flowers and patterns like a psychedelic inside-out canal barge; the old wooden shutters were adorned with felt hangings, colourful paper cuttings overlapped on the beams, big raw glazed pots overflowed with riotously bright paper flowers and carved wooden bowls held clutches of painted eggs.

Having loved it at first, Bridge now secretly found herself craving minimalism, the sleek straight lines, walls of light and polished concrete floors of the eco houses her husband’s team built for the award-winning architect.

‘Picture it full of carrycots, Pampers bags and plastic toys which is more normal,’ she said, heading through to the little open-plan kitchen to fetch another glass and glug out some red wine for Carly.

‘How old are your little ones?’ Carly asked.

‘DS is thirteen months and lurches between the furniture just like his dad, and my always-talking DD is three next month. You?’

‘Jackson’s coming up eight months, Sienna’s almost three too, and Ellis will be five in March.’ Carly was holding the Merlot out in front of her like a precious orb, and Bridge guiltily wondered whether she drank wine. It was as instinctive to her to pull a cork at six in the evening as it was boil the kettle at six in the morning, but perhaps Carly was more of a cocktail type, or even teetotal. She’d seen her in the village often enough to know that beneath the war paint was a pretty, childlike face whose heavy-lidded insouciance was as artfully applied as tonight’s scarlet lipstick. Scrubbed, she could pass for fifteen.

‘Can I get you something else instead? Gin and tonic maybe? Tea?’

‘This is great.’ She took a huge swig, giving herself a red moustache. ‘Where’s your fella tonight?’

‘Enjoying Sylwester in a little village in Malopolska.’

‘Isn’t he the one that chased Tweety Pie?’

She laughed. ‘It’s what the Polish call New Year’s Eve. They’ll all get very drunk and very jolly, and Aleš will cry and promise his mother that we will move back there soon – never! – and then they’ll sing and dance, and tomorrow they’ll take their hangovers for a forest sled ride to cook sausages over a haybale fire and sing and cry a bit more.’

‘Instead you chose to come back here to sit next to that?’ Carly jerked her head to indicate the whoops through the limestone, poignantly accompanied by ‘Wonderwall.’

‘I flew back for a job interview.’ Bridge pulled a face. ‘Shouldn’t have bothered, given Sous fecking Vide thinks Instagram styling is the primary skill of an office administrator. That, and brown-nosing her fecking arse.’ It was easier to joke off her disastrous meeting at The Jugged Hare with Carly than the Bags, her steady grey gaze amused and wise. She sensed she couldn’t shock Carly, however foul-mouthed she was.