All the comments Amber had made on the ship, encouraging me to forgive Harry, came back to me in a rush: ‘Therapists believe an affair can rescue a marriage’; ‘It’s not about assigning blame, but finding the roots of the infidelity’; ‘All marriages can suffer from a little fidelity fatigue’; ‘We should be more European, and forgive adultery . . .’

No wonder Harry hadn’t contacted me the whole time I was away. He was no doubt desperately worried that Amber would confess. He was just waiting to see the lay of the land. Literally. And why hadn’t she confessed, instead of letting me continue to suffer?

I looked at my middle sister, dumbfounded, battling a desire to knock her to the ground; to pull her hair and pinch her, hard, and Chinese-burn her arms, the way we did when we were girls. I could feel myself reverting. It was primal. It was instinctive. It was survival. It was biblical – siblings smiting each other.

‘Oh my god, Amber! The grief you gave me for lying, when all the time it was you who was telling the biggest lie of all! Why? Why did you do this to me?’

Amber seemed to have become a finalist in a fixed smile event.

‘Tell me, Amber – with brain trepanning, is there pain afterwards?’ Emerald quizzed, sarcastically. She’d got herself drunk to avoid Ruth’s verbal bullets, but was now behaving just like her, shooting from the lip. ‘What were you thinking? Or rather, not thinking . . . Well, say something, for god’s sake!’

‘I . . . I . . . I’m so sorry,’ Amber finally stage-whispered.

‘That’s it? That’s all?’ Emerald threw up her hands in disgust. ‘You’ll have to come up with something better than that, sis.’

‘It’s just, well – Scott tried to put together this flat-pack furniture cupboard and built himself in – I had to call Harry to rescue him. I made Harry a crepe suzette to say thank you. And he was so grateful. And then, you know, Harry started to pop round with that tool belt of his and just fixed everything Scott was too busy saving the world to mend. Pretty soon nothing in my house smoked when I plugged it in, leaked oil, or made a funny clunking noise anymore. And then I’d feed him to say thank you and . . . he liked my cooking so much and, for once in my life, I felt so appreciated . . .’

I reacted to these words as though they were gunfire and dropped my glass in surprise, which smashed into smithereens on the flagstones. Once more, the reassurances Amber had uttered on board the cruise boomeranged back at me: ‘Infidelity is about so much more than sex’; ‘People have affairs because they don’t feel appreciated’; ‘They want to feel wanted, needed, desired’; ‘They are looking for an emotional connection . . .’