Neil, though, was too good a stylist to be dispensed with. Gradually he and Fiona had settled into a new working relationship, of sorts. But he, too, became the victim of what Connie and the others suffered daily: her bitchy putdowns and imperious demands.

It was eight years since he and his husband, Brooks, had bought a house in the next village to Connie’s – much to her delight. She and Neil would often meet for coffee in the rickety wooden barn-conversion that passed as a mini arts centre in the corner of the recreation ground near his house. The cakes were to be avoided – flapjacks and millionaire’s shortbread, oversweet and bordering on stale – but the coffee was delicious.

Angela, who owned and ran the place in a cheerfully haphazard way, was a middle-aged, purple-haired Londoner, her wrists bandaged with multicoloured woven bracelets, sleeveless vests showing off the daisy chains tattooed on the inside of her ropy upper arms. She took her coffee seriously and was always demanding Connie and Neil try out her latest blend – Yemen Mocha with Sumatra Mandheling, dark roast Colombian with light roast Colombian – which she brewed in small cafetières and served with frothed milk in a tin jug. It was way more expensive than any other cup of coffee in the county, but they liked Angela, preferred the offbeat ambience to the chintzy local tea rooms designed for Cheddar Gorge tourists – and loved the coffee.

‘I’m exhausted,’ Neil announced dramatically, flopping onto a chair and leaning on the folding metal garden table, which wobbled alarmingly and threatened to deposit the potted lavender and sugar bowl on the barn floor. ‘I’ve been working my tushi off on this job for weeks now. I’m still there at ten o’clock at night … “Just one more tiny thing, Neil, if you wouldn’t mind.”’ He mimicked a fussy, high-pitched voice, then laughed. ‘He doesn’t sound even remotely like that, but you get the gist.’

Connie smiled as she listened to him talk. But her concentration was elsewhere, her thoughts in disarray. On one hand, she wanted desperately to splurge her secret to her friend, to get Neil to make sense of it and reassure her that she wasn’t mad or even particularly bad to have received, and found tempting, an unsolicited kiss from a virtual stranger. But she hesitated. ‘A shared secret is not a secret,’ her wise mother frequently warned her. And although she trusted Neil with her life, she didn’t want to give such a fleeting moment any currency. Didn’t want it to become a thing between her and Neil. Didn’t want, in fact, to make it more real than it deserved.

‘Enough about me,’ Neil was saying. ‘Tell me about your latest trip.’ His brow furrowed. ‘Como, wasn’t it?’