‘Let me see.’ There was a crimson teardrop sliding down his face. She pulled a tissue out of her skirt pocket and dabbed his cheek with it. ‘You’ll live,’ she said. ‘Now can we please get out of here? It’s horrible!’

They emerged, blinking like moles, into the welcomingly fresh evening air. Meredith could see the twisted barley-sugar chimney pots of her cottage in the distance and had a fierce yearning to be home, running a scented bath that she could lie in with a book and a glass of wine and try to forget that she’d just been hideously disloyal to a mate.

‘Right. I’m off. See you tomorrow. Don’t drive home, will you? You’re way over the limit. Are you going to get a cab?’

Ralph nodded, still holding the tissue to his face. ‘I promise. I’m just going back in to take a few photos of the big damp patch in the cellar while it’s unlocked, and those loose bricks at the back. I’m sure the surveyor did it when he was here, but it’ll be good to have a few for our records.’

‘OK. Have a good evening. Hope the hangover’s not too bad in the morning. And that you’re not scarred for life.’

Meredith set off towards her cottage as Ralph laughed and went back inside the ice house.

Walking back through the rose garden, she tried to analyse her emotions. The guilt was the worst – and she had a feeling that it hadn’t yet properly sunk in. It had been so long since she’d had sex – three years? four? – that there was also, she had to admit, a whiff of relief in the mix, if only to remind her that sex wasn’t all that. Not when it was with someone else’s husband, anyway. It would never happen with Ralph again, she was quite sure of that. A moment of madness.

She walked through the arched gateway separating the rose garden from the kitchen gardens and felt in her pocket for her front door key.

It wasn’t there. Dammit! It must have fallen out in the ice house when she pulled out that tissue for Ralph. Oh well. It was a beautiful evening, no hardship whatsoever to retrace her steps and stroll back. The bath could be postponed for ten minutes.

The sun was beginning to set over the layers of hill when she arrived back at the little grassy ramp leading down to the subterranean ice house. The hobbity door was still slightly ajar. Good, Meredith thought, as she’d had a sudden fear that Leonard on night security might have seen it flapping open and found a padlock to lock it up again; not that there was anything to steal in there. She took out her phone and activated the torch, pushing open the door ready to search the earthen floor.