Although Sam was joking, both he and his mum knew that while Sam was a high-achieving student who liked to follow the rules, his sixteen-year-old sister Chloe was very much the opposite. All she wanted was to hang out with her friends and party. But then, in her moments of honesty, Becks knew that Chloe wasn’t doing anything that she hadn’t done at the same age, it’s just that her behaviour worried her sick.

Not that she really understood Sam, either. In the last year or so he’d become increasingly withdrawn, and as far as Becks could see, the only meaningful social interactions he had outside of school hours were with his hamster, who he doted on.

‘You look lovely, darling,’ the Reverend Colin Starling said as he entered the room wearing his black suit, bib and white collar.

‘How can you say that?’ Becks snapped. ‘These are my yoga clothes.’

Exasperated with her husband’s lack of sensitivity, Becks went upstairs to get changed. At some deep level she knew she’d behaved unreasonably, but she couldn’t shake her feeling of unease.

In the bedroom, she grabbed up her mobile phone to see if Chloe had been in touch. She hadn’t.

‘Becks?’ Colin called up from the bottom of the stairs. ‘You remember we’re having Major Tom Lewis and his wife over for dinner?’

Becks didn’t even bother to respond. Of course she knew they had guests for dinner. She’d been up at six that morning rubbing fennel into a belly of pork so it could have the full ten hours in the slow cooker. Even though Major Tom would be drunk before he arrived, and Mrs Lewis would criticise her by a whole set of criteria she’d only reveal once Becks had failed to meet them.

Becks couldn’t help thinking to herself, where had she gone wrong in her life? It wasn’t that she was unhappy. Far from it. But she wasn’t happy, either. Colin had been a banker when they’d first met, and although they’d both been regular churchgoers, he’d not expressed any interest in the ministry before they’d got married. It was only after Chloe was born that he began to have ‘doubts’ about all the lovely money he was making. And then, right after Sam’s arrival, when their need for money had spiralled, he’d had his ‘calling’. Being a good wife, Becks had supported her husband in his radical change of career from rich banker to country vicar.