‘Oh yes, I know a bit about boys,’ Esther cut in quickly, not wanting the conversation to go anywhere near the ups and downs of Dylan’s teenage years, and feeling a surge of protection for dear Billy too, with his pink translucent jug ears and tumbling, stubby, hopeless piano fingers. Chris was just trying to inject some sparkle into her own life for her, she told herself, wishing it were down an avenue she could more readily enjoy. ‘So, tell me a little more about your work,’ she countered, proceeding to return the compliment of looking riveted while he described falling into IT via a failed start-up, and now being within reach of a top management post.

‘Strategic thinking rather than doing – that’s the dream in my book, Esther. Actually, I love my job,’ he blurted with sudden bitterness, starting an assault on the remains of his steak as if it were an animal still requiring slaughter. ‘It’s having to give away most of my earnings to a heartless bitch that I’m not so keen on. That was her on the phone. Before. Why I took so long.’

‘Sylvie?’ Esther prompted feebly, recalling the name from the brief sharing of relationship histories during the phone call that had preceded the agreement to meet. ‘Oh, splitting up is awful, isn’t it?’ she ventured, truly wanting to offer comfort, but wishing the dreadful sawing of the ragged slab of meat on his plate would stop. ‘However it gets dressed up…’ She faltered, Lucas’s fury at having to sell their end-of-terrace Cambridge house coming back to her: the rants about stepping off the property ladder, the loss of guaranteed future worth. He had spat the words, more distressed, it had seemed to Esther, at the loss of this financial potential than at the decimation of their love and their marriage. ‘At least you have your lovely daughter… Kelly, wasn’t it? Fifteen, going on thirty-five, I think you said.’

Chris dropped his steak knife with a clatter that made her jump. ‘I don’t have Kelly,’ he growled. ‘In fact, I have no access.’ He swigged angrily from his beer glass, slamming it down on the table. ‘I was with lawyers today. That bitch of a mother has poisoned her against me.’ Esther flinched as a catalogue of grievances began to spew out. Sylvie had fleeced him and frittered away what she took. She had slagged him off, not just to their daughter, but to every friend and member of their respective families. One unscheduled ring of the doorbell now of what had once been his home, and it was calls to the police and having the locks changed.