In the meantime, he decided he’d send her a song, and he reached for his phone. He’d send her John Martyn; he’d send ‘Go Down Easy’. It was the only thing he could do, under the circumstances. It was time.

Monday morning, and Ali was busy weaving a web of lies. Michael listened to her in silence as she laid out her plan for the coming week: to go back to Quorn, where the creative block that had descended these past weeks might lift. She must make progress with this new novel, and it wasn’t happening here, it just wasn’t. In Quorn, she might find a way to make the words flow again, roll the rock from the mouth of the cave, let the light in.

‘It’s the pressure of a sequel,’ she said. He was standing with his back to her, watching the birds at the water bath. ‘It’s the expectation, I think. I’ve never had this before. Before, nobody cared what I wrote or when it’d be finished. Now, it’s like, “Where’s the book? We needed it yesterday!”’

She heard her own voice, a study in guile. There was truth in what she said – she hadn’t written a word for weeks. The lie was in the untold. She watched her husband, who wouldn’t look round but remained stubbornly fascinated by the galahs battling it out for a turn at the stone trough. She wondered if this meant he knew already that she hadn’t been with Tahnee until after midnight last night, and this idea – plausible enough, given her own reckless behaviour in the pub – sent a wave of anxiety through her gut, which disappeared as swiftly as it had come when he turned around and said in a perfectly normal voice, ‘Are Sheila and Dora there at the moment?’

Now she was a little ashamed at the relief, which suddenly seemed to indicate a lack of character, an absence of resolve. ‘I haven’t called them,’ she said. ‘I will, soon, but Sheila always leaves a key under the Buddha, she told me it was there, if I ever dropped by and found them gone.’

‘Dropped by? Hardly likely, unless you’re en route to the desert.’ He was pouring coffee now, his second cup, which meant that soon he’d be gone.

‘Sorry it all got a bit angsty last night,’ she said. ‘Cass was pissed when she arrived. I could see it in her face, her eyes were too wide and wild.’

Michael said, ‘Cass is a liability the minute she steps through the door. But it was Stella who won the trophy for obnoxious behaviour last night.’