Pacing around her room again dried her off. She pulled on her jeans and tee. The heating was stifling.

After eleven. She checked her mother’s phone, hoping Luca O’Brien had the sense to try that number now hers was useless. Nothing. Bloody man. Bloody men.

It was no good. She’d have to go to the bar. She was stopping at midnight.

4

Accustomed to Aleš demanding silent concentration on movie night, turning on Polish subtitles and rewinding to slo-mo through his favourite bits, Bridge had almost forgotten what it was like to watch a movie with a girlfriend in under two hours, the way it became background noise the better the conversation got, like covering fire, while they got down to the nitty-gritty of putting the world to rights. They’d chatted throughout Futureland, polishing off another bottle of red and all the nachos. It reminded her of nights with Bernie, back in the Kilburn days.

Vaguely aware that she was starting to talk very loudly and swear even more than usual, Bridge boasted about her first big job and how high up the management ladder she’d climbed; about the business degree her company had sponsored her to take; about her plans to get her career back on track.

‘Sure, will you listen to me mithering on like I’m on The Apprentice?’ she checked herself, disappointed to find the wine bottle empty again.

‘Sir Alan would bloody love you.’ Carly took it all in good spirit, not competitive and edgy like the Saddle Bags, those pretty Mexican eyes sleepy, the sweet Wiltshire voice amused as she admitted she’d only ever dogsbodied in dead-end jobs.

‘I don’t need no CV at a job interview. I just show them the state of my hands.’

Then she had Bridge in stitches describing what it was like to work for her sister-in-law, Janine, who ran her contract cleaning, mobile nail studio and new dog-walking businesses in tandem like a gangland boss. ‘She never forgives. A couple of months back, she called a staff meeting to put a hex on this woman from Broadbourne Lane who sacked Fluffy Dusters for not hoovering beneath the beds. We had to burn herbs in candle flames and all sorts.’

‘Did it work?’ Bridge was agog. Practical Magic was another favourite film.

Carly winked. ‘According to Janine they’ve got mice and mould all over the place.’

‘Is that like a Romany curse?’ Bridge loved the twice annual arrival of the Turner family’s many traveller cousins and kin, en route to Stow Horse fair. Aleš, who was paranoid his tools would get nicked, couldn’t understand her fascination.

‘Nah, she got it off Facebook.’

Most of all they talked about kids, laughed about kids – their little ones that were toddling and crawling, not ones in full-time education like the older Bags. And they talked horse, Carly’s great love of them consolidating since moving to the village. Having made friends with local ones over gates and in the studs’ fields, her natural affinity was clear. Petra’s children’s ponies waited at their fence for her every day, and all the Bags were familiar with the extraordinary story of one of the stud’s valuable colts, saved by Carly when last year’s big autumn storm brought down a tree on him. Gill still called it a miracle.