Millie’s son is a good-looking boy – only to be expected with a mother who looks like Millie. His freckled face is wide and open, and his thatch of thick, honey-coloured hair flops endearingly into long-lashed tawny eyes. Stacey guesses he’s going to be a heartbreaker when he’s older.

Her own son is in the same school year as Peter, but he looks closer in age to Harper’s boys. Pale and gangly. Thin. Felix says Archie looks just like he did himself at that age, and her husband has certainly grown into a handsome, if saturnine, man, his face an arresting combination of sharp planes and tight angles. But it’s not just the way Archie looks. His whole demeanour is that of one of life’s victims. He was bullied at Asher Brook Primary and now the same thing’s happening at the expensive boarding school in Edinburgh that was supposed to be the making of him. She wishes he had a tenth of Peter Downton’s confidence.

She and Harper join Millie by the pool. All four boys have already stripped off and are in the water, shouting and splashing, Peter in the thick of them. He seems like a strong swimmer to Stacey.

She watches Millie’s boy haul himself out of the pool and dive-bomb back in, his tanned, muscular limbs in sharp contrast to Archie’s feeble spaghetti arms and scrawny white legs. The two young Conway brothers follow Peter’s lead, smacking into the water like bowling balls and drenching everything within a ten-foot radius. Only Archie hangs back from the ruckus, doggy-paddling at the shallow end.

‘What’s he doing here?’ Millie demands suddenly.

Stacey turns towards the clubhouse. Felix is striding alongside the pool towards them, his formal grey suit – why is he wearing a suit? It’s the weekend! – jarringly out of place amid the families in shorts and T-shirts and swimsuits.

Stacey puts her beach bag down on the nearest sunlounger. She deliberately didn’t tell her husband where she would be. ‘How did you find me?’ she asks.

Felix skirts a little girl nerving herself up to jump into the pool. ‘Phone,’ he says shortly.

‘You tracked her?’ Millie exclaims.

Felix ignores her. ‘You didn’t pick up when I called,’ he tells his wife.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t hear my phone—’

He takes her upper arm. ‘Never mind that now. I need to talk to you.’

‘Get your hands off her!’ Millie cries.

Stacey reaches awkwardly for her bag as her husband literally pulls her away from her friends. ‘It’s fine, honestly. If you could just give Archie a lift home—’

‘You fucking thug,’ Millie hisses at Felix.

‘I don’t think you’re helping,’ Harper mutters.