‘He wasn’t always scum, Donna. Georgio’s trouble was greed. He was always greedy - and greedy people do terrible things. Remember him years ago? Before the building business got big? He was a good man in them days.’

Donna snorted. ‘Was he? He was so good he was shagging anything that moved and wasn’t nailed down, that’s how good he was. Do you know how I feel, Dolly? Can you even guess what I’m feeling now? I find out that twenty years of my life were completely wasted on a piece of scum. A piece of shit. A Greek ponce! I feel as if everyone must have been laughing up their sleeves at me over the years. Stupid Donna, the idiot in the Mercedes. The well-dressed, well-spoken wife of the biggest slag God ever put on the earth.

‘And do you know the worst of it all?’ she admitted bitterly. ‘I looked down on people like Carol Jackson. I thought she was common! Because I had my degree, I assumed I was far more intelligent than them. Yet Carol Jackson has more savvy, as she would call it, in her little finger than I have in my whole body! I’m a useless prat and Georgio used me for this jump, knowing that. Knowing I was silly enough to believe whatever he told me.

‘Oh, sod the tea,’ Donna decided. ‘Let’s get out the scotch, Dolly. There’s a lot more I still have to tell you.’

Carol Jackson watched Davey as she put the children’s tea on the table. He was gnawing at his thumbnail, always a sign of agitation, and she wondered what was bothering him.

‘Are you all right, Davey?’

He stared out of the window and ignored her.

‘Davey! I said, are you all right?’

He looked at her then, his blue eyes shadowed with fear, and Carol dropped to her knees by his chair.

‘What’s the matter, Davey? You haven’t been right for a while. Is there something wrong? Can I help you with it? Is there anything I can do?’

Davey looked down into his wife’s face. Her blonde hair was as usual backcombed into a tangle, her make-up expertly overdone. One of her false eyelashes had come unstuck in the corner and it gave her eyes an oddly pleasing appearance. As if she was oriental. Her lipstick was gone, but the pencil outline remained.