Paula followed him and they waited together. The trickle of arrivals soon turned into an outpouring; a river of tanned people looking cheerful and healthy after their Madeiran holiday. Duty-free bags clinked. Bulging cases trundled. This family heading for the car park. That family being greeted by awaiting friends. The couple over there looking hungover in his-and-hers matching sunglasses, holding hands and smiling at each other. Through they all came, one after another: not Jeanie, not Jeanie, not Jeanie. Still not Jeanie.

Half an hour after the plane had landed, an elderly man with a walking frame shuffled slowly through the doors, and they closed behind him with a certain finality. You could almost hear Harry’s anticipation fizzling out to nothing as the doors remained shut for several minutes afterwards. He frowned and wet his lips. ‘That’s strange,’ he said. ‘I wonder where she is?’

‘She might be in the Ladies, touching up her lippy,’ Paula suggested. Jeanie had been known to put on mascara to do the gardening, after all – plus she liked to make an entrance. If Paula herself ever had the massive kind of bust-up with her husband that saw her jetting off on holiday alone in a fury, she’d damn well stake out the Ladies for a full hair and make-up check before she emerged through the Arrivals door. Wouldn’t most women?

‘Maybe they’re still loading on some of the luggage,’ Harry said, checking his watch. ‘They batch them up, don’t they, in those big trolleys? You never know, one of the trolleys might have got stuck or . . .’ His voice petered out again.

‘She’ll be here in a minute,’ Paula said bracingly, although as that same minute ticked by, followed by another and then another, the two of them found themselves beginning to doubt these words.

Everything all right, Mum? Paula texted as Harry trudged disconsolately towards the information desk in the hope of discovering his wife’s whereabouts. A few moments later, Paula’s phone pinged with an incoming message and she let out a gasp. ‘Um . . . Dad?’ she called after him, blinking and checking the words again, just in case she’d gone mad. ‘You might want to come and read this . . .’

‘No way!’ breathed Robyn, open-mouthed, when John got Paula’s update with the no-Jeanie bombshell. ‘She wasn’t on the plane?’

‘Is she all right?’ asked Bunny in alarm, when Dave told her the same piece of news. ‘Well . . . when will she be back?’

WTF??? texted Stephen. Do we need to stage an intervention?

‘Bloody hell,’ spluttered Matt, sitting up straight in his deckchair on the patio, as Paula came home, still pop-eyed with shock, and told him the latest. ‘So what happens now?’