Camille’s problem was that she was used to being the busy one. It was she, in the past fifteen years, who’d had the important work life. After a stretch of years, you established a certain dynamic and rhythm as a couple. You came to an understanding of yourselves through certain things you did together, through ways of being which were insignificant in themselves, and yet which, over time, appeared – especially if they were taken away – to go to the heart of what kept you at peace. Until he became minister last year, Seb had entertained the children all weekend; made their weekly night out together an institution; had time to concoct complicated bookings for unconventional holidays far away from Britain. Just thinking about the things which Sebastian and she no longer discussed made Camille feel exhausted. He had long since ceased to enquire about her work.

‘Today I decided to take up sheep farming in France,’ she said one evening in the kitchen.

‘Did you, darling?’ Sebastian said, looking up from his phone just long enough to give her the impression that he attended to her words; only realising she had uttered words which required his active consideration, from the flash of hatred on her face. And Camille’s thoughts made her catch her breath. Where had this bitterness come from?

There were several possible sources. The fact that she hadn’t taken her children to Senegal. (Unpardonable. Her fault, of course, for not insisting. Just because they lived in England: no direct flights from London.) The entitlement of the Harcourt-Vane gene pool. (His brothers and their offspring. Especially his brothers. How they talked to each other.) Zoe, Sebastian’s daughter. (Not Zoe herself: Sebastian’s treatment of her.) When Camille first met Sebastian, he had complained that his mother didn’t appreciate how difficult it was for him to break through Zoe’s barrier of shyness. In Camille’s opinion, most of that was due to apathy on his part: he was simply too busy to get to know her. He ought to have invited her to London for the weekend. Or included her in family holidays to the South of France, or made a point of coming up to the islands to see her school plays and attend her Sports Day. But he didn’t do these things. Instead, he chose to maintain a cordial distance.

At first he told himself that he was doing this for the sake of Camille, for the children. But Camille had always liked Zoe.

Camille could also see that Eva truly loved Sebastian’s firstborn. That much was clear. It was she Eva spoke of always, when she rang. Zoe’s getting into environmental issues, she would tell her son; next time you’re up why don’t you go and speak at her school? And Seb would shake his head at this folly of his mother’s – she had no idea of the demands on his time.