‘Not for me,’ Dan said. ‘But more wine, I think.’ He topped up everyone’s glasses, no one said no to that, then he refilled his own and sat back in his chair surveying the faces around him, none of which looked especially happy. He felt a sudden, unusual detachment and, with it, a disorientating feeling of instability that descended upon him like a short bout of vertigo so that he laid his palms flat on the table to steady himself, and ever after he’d remember this moment as a kind of premonition, his subconscious self one step ahead of the hard facts, because there was the bright ‘ting’ of an incoming message, and Rose-Ann delved into her handbag on the floor. ‘Nope, not me,’ she said, slipping her phone back down into the dark interior. Katelin, on her feet now, still offering cold meat and vegetables to her unwilling guests, saw Dan’s phone in among the clutter of the Sunday-lunch worktop, tilted her head to read the screen, frowned, looked closer; then in a fluid, furious, extraordinary movement she raised the large oval platter of meat up high and threw it violently down so that it smashed and bled – a terrible sound, a terrible sight, like a grenade attack in their suburban kitchen – on to the tiles of the kitchen floor. Rose-Ann screamed and clutched at her chest and Duncan spun round, thinking Katelin must’ve fallen or fainted, but she was standing, strung taut like a wire, ready to snap, directing a deep black stare at Dan, who leapt up and seized his phone, then stalked out of the kitchen to read what Katelin had already seen.

Ali was on the move. She’d left Michael as honestly and compassionately as she could, but her honesty and compassion were futile in the face of his implacable disbelief. She told him it was over, and he told her it wasn’t. She told him she was leaving and he told her she wasn’t. She told him she loved him still, but that she loved Dan differently, and more, and he told her she wasn’t thinking straight and didn’t know her own mind. Even as he watched her pack a rucksack, find her passport, ring for a taxi to the airport, he’d devoutly believed she wouldn’t possess the courage or the cruelty to walk out of the door and away from their life, and when finally he had to accept that she was capable of this, he’d raged at her, dry-eyed and damning.

‘You’re a fantasist, chasing a bloody teenage dream,’ he’d said, maddened and bewildered by the stoicism of her resistance.

‘Michael,’ Ali said. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Is this Cass’s idea? Has she talked you into it?’

Ali shook her head and stared at him aghast. ‘Do you think I haven’t a mind of my own? That I do either what you say, or what Cass says?’