‘We’re all having fun, except maybe little Ash,’ he continues pleasantly. ‘Hang on a tick.’ She hears a door shutting, footsteps, a door opening then shutting again; he must have walked out of the kitchen and into another room for privacy. ‘He won’t stop crying,’ Paul’s voice has changed, darkened. ‘It’s driving me insane.’

Paul hates the noise of children crying. When Izzy cried as a baby, Melissa had to take her to another part of the house or out in the car. She bites back the offer she was going to make about collecting them. The anger and alcohol will make a potent mix; safer for her if he stays over there, Izzy will enjoy the night with her friends.

‘What about Martin and the children?’

‘His lady wife summoned them home.’

Once back at home, Melissa takes her laptop to the kitchen for the warmth of the stove, and looks up Salisbury, reading about the cathedral with its fourteenth-century clock and thick surrounding walls. The countryside nearby, the town itself, had a feeling of ancient peace, a place where one could escape. Women escape danger all the time, there are safe houses everywhere. She looked them up once; places run by Women’s Aid where your partner can’t rape you whenever he wants, because he’d have no idea where you are.

She closes her laptop with a sharp click. What is she thinking of? People would say she’s lucky compared to most. She has a beautiful house, they’d say, money, a fantastic job, friends – though she’s afraid if she tells them the truth, they would struggle to believe her. She wouldn’t blame them; her marriage looks perfect from the outside and so does her husband. The truth would be humiliating and worse, far too risky. Paul is clever. If he thought she was telling her friends, he’d hire a good lawyer, deny everything and turn the tables on her. She’d be labelled anorexic, work obsessed, unfit to parent. He’d divorce her, gaining custody of Izzy.