Robyn stared blankly at her. ‘The news?’ she repeated, then guessed the other woman must be talking about John’s parents. Oh, goodness! Had word spread that far already? ‘You mean . . . about Harry and Jeanie?’ she asked warily. Was Beth referring to the airport drama, or the revelation about Harry’s other daughter? she wondered. She couldn’t help feeling disloyal for even entering into a conversation about it, when John had been so reluctant to tell her, his own wife, the full story yesterday. She was sure he wouldn’t want the whole playground gossiping. And how come Beth Broadwood thought it was any of her business anyway?

‘Oh!’ said Beth, looking confused herself. ‘No, I meant about John. Losing his job,’ she added, a moment later when Robyn didn’t respond. She turned red. ‘Sorry – I’m not being nosy. It was just something Paul said . . . Maybe I’ve got it wrong. Probably. I just wanted to say I hope you’re okay anyway.’

Robyn’s brain was working very fast, but she didn’t seem to be making sense of this conversation. What the hell was Beth on about – John losing his job? ‘We’re fine, thanks,’ she managed to say, her mind still spinning. Beth’s husband Paul worked at the university too, she remembered now.

‘Right. Of course you are! Anyway, I’ll . . .’ Beth’s teeth were bared in an awkward grimace. ‘Here come the kids,’ she said in the next moment, sounding relieved.

The singing inside the school had come to a close and the first children were emerging from the building, some hand-in-hand and deep in conversation, others practically bouncing with the release of freedom, one dreamy-eyed boy running a thoughtful hand along the railings. Beth melted into the crowd as she spotted one of her blonde, pigtailed daughters, and Robyn was left standing there in a daze. Beth had to be mistaken, surely? John would have told her if he’d lost his job! Except . . . She remembered how strangely he had been acting lately, how distracted he’d seemed. He would tell her news like that, wouldn’t he?

Here came Sam amidst the throng anyway, head and shoulders above the others, however hard he tried to fold himself into a smaller size; and Robyn waved a hand in the air, trying to stop thinking about her husband. Sam’s dark hair was sticking up at the front, she noticed, probably where he’d wiped a sweaty hand through it earlier, and there was a grass stain on his shirt. With his brown eyes, the mud-splat of freckles and his broad shoulders, Sam was Mortimer through and through: John’s mini-me. It pleased her, on a very deep level, that her boy was cast from the same mould as his antecedents, unmistakably the latest in the line. Today, though, she looked at him and saw her husband’s closed face. What happened, John? Why are you keeping secrets from me?