It would never have been Geraldine’s intention to humiliate and embarrass Naomi by instigating the conversation they’d had, but that was how she felt, stripped bare of all pretence. In one fell swoop she had gone from thinking that everyone loved and respected the man to whom she’d been married, to suspecting that actually everybody knew the truth and pitied her.

Yet what exactly was the truth? That Colin hadn’t been the perfect husband everyone believed him to be? That behind closed doors, not even closed sometimes, he had been a patronising bully? Nobody was perfect, she used to tell herself; everyone had their share of faults. Hers would certainly run to a lengthy list. In her mind she pictured a dusty scroll of papyrus steadily unrolling as fault after fault was read out in a booming voice of condemnation.

Top of the list, in large bold type, would be SELFDECEPTION.

She was an expert in that, having forced herself to see it as a strength, a virtue even. For the sake of the family. But actually, it was a sign of weakness and cowardice. Of which she wasn’t proud. She would never allow her daughters to behave the way she had.

It first happened when Colin missed out on a promotion which he’d believed was his as a matter of course.

‘I’m perfect for the job,’ he’d said. ‘Everybody reckons I’m a shoo-in.’

But when somebody was brought in from outside to do the job, and Colin then had directly to report to that person, he was furious. He arrived home from London at Anchor House that Friday evening in a foul mood. It was an understandable blow to his pride and Naomi did her best to absorb his disappointment. That’s how she saw her role during that period, as a sponge to soak up the bitterness leaking from his fractured self-esteem.

His mood and temper worsened when the new man, a brash American (so Colin said) took up the position. Then one weekend, after several days of the girls being unwell with a sickness bug (they were five and two at the time), and just as Naomi had settled them in bed, Colin flipped. And over, of all things, the remote control. She came downstairs to find him hurling things around in the sitting room as he searched for it.

‘This place is a sodding tip!’ he shouted as he kicked over a basket of books and toys. ‘Do you really think this is what I want to come home to after a stressful week at work?’

‘And do you think after a week of looking after the children on my own, I need you to start behaving like a toddler having a tantrum?’

That was when his hand caught her hard on her cheek. Such was the sudden force of the blow, her head snapped back and she nearly toppled over. Shock sucked the breath out of her. Regaining her balance, she stared at him in stunned disbelief, her heart hammering in her chest.