‘He’ll be OK, once he’s adjusted,’ Connie said finally.

‘And his back?’

‘I’m pretty sure that’s not as bad as he makes out. He’s using it as an excuse not to do anything at the moment. But, of course, the less he does, the worse it’ll get.’

Caitlin put her arm round Connie’s shoulders as they walked. She was taller than her mother, with shiny dark auburn – almost plum – hair and her father’s deep-set blue eyes in an intelligent, open face. ‘Very tough on you, all this,’ she said, giving her a squeeze.

‘We’ll get through it,’ Connie replied. ‘We always do.’

But she realized, despite her confident words, that there hadn’t been anything very significant to ‘get through’ till now. Their marriage simply hadn’t been tested. We’ve been lucky, she thought, looking back on decades during which they had shared their life on a mostly even keel. She felt a pang of self-pity. She spent so much time trying to work around Devan’s moods, these days, but it was wearing her down. And she didn’t even have her mum to confide in any more.

Connie thought back wistfully to the night they had met. She had been just twenty-four and had gone to Glastonbury with her American friend, Gaby. It was the first time the festival had been called ‘Glastonbury’ and the first year of the new Pyramid stage, which looked huge and impressive but was actually shed-work standard: metal sheeting and telegraph poles. Gaby was a dedicated Hawkwind fan and although Connie was a bit vague about space rock – her preference being Motown – she went along because she loved music, loved dancing, loved meeting new people.

But Gaby had surreptitiously taken one of the many unidentified substances circulating in the summer darkness and had suddenly begun to sweat and puke, becoming quickly disoriented. Connie, realizing that something was very wrong, managed to stagger for what seemed like miles through the swaying, intoxicated crowds, the cold, churned-up mud squelching between her toes, clutching her limp friend against her shoulder, until she reached the medical tent on the outer edges of the field, where she almost threw Gaby into the volunteer doctor’s arms.

Devan and the nurse – who seemed to be the one in charge and way more experienced than the trainee doctor – took over, while Connie stared anxiously on, although Gaby was already coming round by the time they reached the tent.

To tell the truth, Connie was quickly distracted from her friend’s drama as she basked in the beam of Devan McCabe’s extraordinary, reassuring smile. It was as if she herself had been drugged, aware that she couldn’t help gazing back into those blue eyes. He’d looked so funny, so conservative and self-conscious in his tidy jeans and blue shirt, compared to the drunken, barefoot, T-shirt-and-shorts mob outside the tent. She wanted to hug him.