If I’d been on a plane, an oxygen mask would have dropped from the overhead panel at this moment. Mayday! Mayday! All I could do was adopt the brace position.

25

Harry propelled himself towards me with such force that I steadied myself for a punch. But he hugged me instead. I thought about smiling in greeting, but decided it was just a waste of facial muscles.

‘I still love you,’ my husband said rapidly. ‘So much.’ He raked his blonde hair, the colour of ripe wheat, out of his anxious face. ‘I know I should’ve been in touch, but I was so pissed off, to be honest. I couldn’t process it all – the way you put me down in front of all our mates. I thought we were happy and then, kapow!’

I raised a combative brow. ‘Our happiness warranty expired when I found out you’d been cheating on me.’

‘But I didn’t! That’s bullshit. Those stupid texts were just harmless bloody in-jokes with an old client I was trying to keep sweet, which you totally misinterpreted. I swear on . . . on Don Bradman’s grave. Whatever happened to innocent till proven friggin’ guilty?’ His face crumpled.

I saw Emerald and Amber greeting their own husbands. Scott was wearing the standard uniform of the intellectual male – rumpled linen shirt with a trail of food stains, like a menu, down the front, faded chinos covered in ink stains, and a pair of white Crocs, which looked as though he had two huge paracetamols strapped to his feet. As he hugged her, I thought it took all of Amber’s considerable strength of character not to show that she found the whole look extremely irritating.

Emerald, on the other hand, launched herself at Alessandro with a feline moan of pleasure. With his dark, curly hair, forearms like glazed cudgels and bodyguard build, if he didn’t have that ruthless look so common to hardened Mafiosos, the man could have been a male model. ‘Hi, babe,’ he said, his voice as composed and calm as a hotel receptionist, then vaulted out of Emerald’s grasp on the pretext of picking up her suitcase.