‘My parents think I should be married with at least four children.’ Maddy snapped. ‘My parents, thankfully, live far enough away not to stick their noses into my business every thirty seconds.’

‘They were delighted to see Peter at Caroline’s party,’ Bronwyn trundled on. ‘Your mother said she was hoping for a reconciliation. She said –’

‘Shut up!’ Maddy screamed. ‘Mind your own business!’

She slammed out of the shop and leaned against the window, scrabbling at the Mars bar wrapper and cramming the whole gooey delight into her mouth. Bronwyn flung the door open.

‘You want to see a doctor, my girl. You got trouble with your hormonals?’

The door crashed shut again. Maddy gulped down the Mars bar and immediately felt sick. She’d seen a doctor. She wasn’t pregnant. The news, which she had been praying for, had perversely reduced her to tears. Dr Hodgson had been more than happy to prescribe the pill to prevent further problems of that nature. Maddy had the little box in her handbag. She’d start taking them next week.

Listlessly, she pushed her bicycle away from the shop’s window. It was pathetic, really. What was the point of knocking back contraceptives when the nearest she’d get to sex in the future was stuffing her fingers in her ears every time Luke came to stay?

The front door to the cottage was wide open. Had she forgotten to shut it? Probably, she thought, dropping the bicycle on the path. She was forgetting everything else. For a moment she wondered if she’d been burgled, then immediately discounted it. Any self-respecting burglar would sniff round the cottage and leave a note saying: ‘Not today, thank you,’ and then send a food parcel. And burglars wouldn’t be playing Def Leppard at a hundred and thirty decibels, would they?

Come to that, Maddy thought, kicking away the hall rug and shutting the door, neither would Suzy. Recently she’d swapped Michael Bolton for groin-tingling smoochiness from Roberta Flack. Def Leppard was not a good sign.

The noise jarred her headache into her teeth as she opened the sitting room door. Suzy, her face pale, was hunched on the sofa. Forgetting her pains and her menstrual spots, Maddy switched off the stereo. Suzy didn’t move.

‘What is it, love? Is it Luke?’ She gathered Suzy into her arms. She was so thin it was like cradling a baby bird. Her body seemed to have no substance. ‘What’s he done?’

Hurting so much from not having Drew, Maddy could feel Suzy’s pain. A sigh shuddered through the fragile frame. ‘’S not Luke.’

Thank God for that, .Maddy thought, smoothing the white-blonde hair away from Suzy’s troubled eyes. She wasn’t sure she could cope with any more heartbreak. ‘What, then? Come on, Suzy. Tell me.’

‘’S Kimberley.’

‘God! What’s happened to her? Has there been an accident?’