‘All still on for dinner tonight?’ Robbie asked.

‘We cannot wait. Mark and the girls are away, and the smaller ones are an absolute handful without the bigger ones. As you can see,’ Susie said, gripping Luke’s hand as he tried to pull away. ‘So I badly need a night out.’

‘Excellent. We’ll see you at eight so,’ Robbie said, rubbing his hands together.

‘Wonderful. And our turn next, for sure. As soon as we’re properly settled over in Oakbrook,’ Susie said. ‘Did you hear about Ines’s mother?’

They hadn’t.

‘Oh. She passed away this morning. Ines is trying to get a flight to Spain.’

Mary clapped a hand to her mouth. ‘That’s awful. Are they still here? I saw them in the church.’

‘No, they’ve gone on home. She’s trying to get over there as soon as she can.’

‘So they won’t be at the dinner tonight?’ Robbie said, sounding a little put out.

Mary winced.

Susie gave him a funny look. ‘I’d guess not.’

And that was how, Mary thought later, Ruth Cavanagh ended up at the dinner. The flap of the butterfly’s wings that changed everything.

‘That child will get fat.’

Mary turned, startled, as Ruth Cavanagh emerged from behind a tree in her garden, shears in hand. Mary and Robbie stopped at her gate as Lily skipped ahead, then turned back too, a lollipop in her mouth.

‘Ah, it’s just a Sunday treat, Ruth, it won’t kill her,’ Robbie said. ‘We always stop into the shop after Mass.’

‘Mass.’ She sniffed. ‘Full of hypocrites. When I was teaching, every child in the class could tell me they’d been to Mass on Sunday but not one of them knew their Bible.’

Lily, oblivious to Ruth’s mood, had slipped into the driveway, still sucking on her lollipop.

Ruth turned to stare at Mary. ‘If anyone thinks they’re something when they’re not, they deceive themselves. Galatians 6:3.’

Mary felt a wave of heat crawl over her skin. An itch to get away. She glanced up the road towards home, spotting Ellen, Aoife and Gavin at the edge of the green. Ellen’s blonde ponytail bobbed up and down in the sunlight as she hopped from foot to foot. Aoife was saying something to Gavin, trying to convince him to come with them, pointing over towards the building site. The Rowanbrook residents didn’t like that – kids hanging out in the building site. But as far as Mary could tell, there was nowhere much for them to go. As she watched, she saw Gavin shake his head. Then he turned slightly and locked eyes with her. She looked away.

‘We should go,’ she said. ‘Lily, time to go!’ It was only then that she registered Lily was hunkered down at the bed of flowers that bordered Ruth’s lawn. ‘Lily! Come away from those, foxgloves are dangerous!’

Lily obediently slipped back out of the driveway as Ruth made a ‘pah’ noise and muttered something about ‘foreigners’. Mary wasn’t quite sure how being ‘foreign’ made her any less likely to know about gardening, and felt a rare compulsion to defend herself.