Sue closed her eyes. She had forgotten that Cordelia had Rory’s number, and the sort of incentive that meant she’d try to call him herself.

‘Well, I don’t hold him under lock and key you know,’ she said smartly, turning as she heard Cordelia’s chuckle. ‘I don’t!’

‘Hey listen.’ Cordelia raised her palms. ‘I’m not criticising your methods. I’m just saying that, you have a thumb and Rory lives under it. If anything I admire you and your iron grip on his entire life. If I ever get married, which I never will, I definitely want to marry someone who would also make a good lackey. Now, do you fancy a cuppa? I’m going to make myself a pot and then go and have a zombie Christmas movie marathon. I know what you are thinking – that there are not enough zombie Christmas movies to make up a marathon, well, Sue, you’d be surprised there’s actually—Sue? Wait … are you crying?’

Sue turned her back on Cordelia and tried her best to stop her shoulders from shaking, as the sobs threatened in the base of her throat.

‘Seriously.’ Cordelia crossed to her side and peered at her face. ‘Sue, you don’t have Rory under your thumb. I was joking! It was a joke. Is it the change, are you having the change?’

‘I’m only forty!’ Sue whipped around. ‘I’m not old, I’m not a decrepit dried-up old shrew. That’s the trouble with you young people, with your hair, and your skin and your perkiness. You think that a woman gets into her forties and she’s worth nothing any more, no one looks at her, no one cares about her.’

‘What? Wait.’ Cordelia took a couple of steps back, her hands gravitating to her hips. ‘Sue, dude. What’s going on? Where’s General Sue, the woman who runs Poldore like a well-oiled machine, beloved and feared by her people in equal measure?’

Sue sat down, feeling every ounce of fight and emotion draining from her body, flowing out through her fingertips as the tears she no longer had the strength to hold back began to flow in earnest. Suddenly she didn’t care about the pageant any more, or Santa’s grotto, or co-ordinating the fake snow consignment, or any of the things that usually kept her on her toes at this time of year. Nope, she just wanted to drink a bottle of Baileys and go to sleep.

‘Rory has left me,’ she said. ‘He left almost two weeks ago. I found a note on my pillow.’

‘Don’t be silly, Rory hasn’t left you,’ Cordelia said, sitting down beside her. ‘I mean, you know, he’s a nice enough man, but he can barely tie his own shoelaces, let alone survive on his own, in the wild.’