‘You hit me,’ she murmured incredulously. She put her hand to her face, then looked at it and saw blood. It was coming from her mouth.

His eyes wide, his jaw slack, he stared back at her. And then he just seemed to crumple before her eyes. Suddenly he wasn’t the Colin she knew; he was a small frightened boy who knew that he had just done something terrible.

She had seen his rage before when he’d shattered the screen of his laptop because it had lost a document he’d been working on, or when he’d yelled furiously down the phone at some poor devil in a call centre who wasn’t dealing with a problem in the way Colin wanted. There were plenty of other occasions too when the red mist had come down – when his inner demon that he refused even to acknowledge had the better of him – but never before had he done something like this.

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!’ he repeated, tears filling his eyes. ‘Oh, my God, I didn’t mean to do that. Forgive me, please. That’s not who I am. I swear to God. It’s the stress of work right now. It’s—’

From upstairs came the sound of Martha calling for one of them to take her up a drink.

‘I’ll go,’ Naomi said quietly, swallowing her shock and rubbing away any trace of blood from her face. ‘You tidy up the mess you’ve made here.’

By the time she had dealt with Martha, and then Willow who also wanted a cup of water, Naomi had her composure fully reinstated. Downstairs, she found Colin in the kitchen hunched over the sink and staring into the darkness of the garden. Or maybe he’d been looking at the man staring back at him from his reflection in the window.

‘I don’t know what to say,’ he said hoarsely, but without looking at her.

‘Nor do I,’ she replied. ‘Apart from this: you must never lose your temper like that again. And never in front of the girls.’

He turned to face her. ‘I swear, it won’t happen ever again. You have my word.’

But it had And not just once.

Putting aside her spade and taking off her gardening hat, Naomi used her forearm to wipe the sweat from her forehead. With a dispirited sense of hopelessness, she surveyed the weedfree vegetable patch and wondered what it was all for.

The question was aimed not so much at the merit of her morning’s toil, but at her life, and specifically what she had achieved in that life. Could it have been better spent if she had been honest and told the truth at all times?

And where should that honesty have started? With Colin’s affair, or his temper and violence. Or with her infidelity with Ellis?

Why had she not possessed the courage to admit to the affair in the way that Colin had when he confessed that he had slept with his secretary? It could have been a simple tit-for-tat admission. See, two can play at that game!