My name was still on the rent book – for now, at least – and my main concern was keeping it that way.

I didn’t like the way I’d felt with Nella and her friends last night. As Melissa finally managed to pull into the car park below the flats, between a jacked-up Honda with a missing door, and a group of lads pulling wheelies on the ramp, I decided I wasn’t going to get properly involved with the street party.

I wanted to pull out before it got any more uncomfortable. I’d just have to summon the courage to tell Nella.

Nella

We were meant to go back to the marriage counsellor the day after we got back from camping, but Marcus cried off last minute.

Pouring over photos on his laptop he’d taken on the trip, he kissed my hand absently when I passed him a coffee and said, sorry, but he was too busy; he had to go into the campaign office, and that it was more important for us to sort Beau out – which I didn’t disagree with.

‘What are all these photos for?’ I leant over his shoulder as he imported a batch of the teens round the campfire into a folder.

‘Don’t lean on me, it’s still really sore, darling.’ He clicked busily. ‘Campaign social media. Getting down with the kids.’

‘Sorry.’ I tried hard not to frown; it’s so bad for the face. ‘Why?’

‘The diversity ticket, you know.’

‘What does that mean exactly?’ I failed: I was definitely frowning.

‘Appealing to all, Nel.’ He shut the laptop smartly. ‘Gotta go.’

And it transpired that concentrating on Beau actually meant me taking the kids down to my parents while Marcus went back to work.

I debated asking Rebekah to come for company, but the truth was I was really annoyed with her: not just for the stupid brownie incident, but for revealing it was her husband Pete who’d sold the building site next door that Bill had bought. Which, of course, was partly my own doing, Pete and Bill having met at the drinks we held last year at the Mayfair Hotel, to celebrate Marcus’s bid for selection to run as MP, and to foster support. Bill wasn’t our friend, of course, but had been invited along by one of Marcus’s City backers.

Now Rebekah was trying to muscle in on the street party plans. She might have been prefect to my head girl at Benenden, but I didn’t want an assistant. I needed to keep this event as my thing: it was very much my baby!

On the M4 to Somerset, I was tense – couldn’t help thinking there were other reasons my husband hadn’t wanted to go back to the counsellor, not least because she seemed to be coming down quite heavily on my side.

I looked at Beau in the car mirror: the picture of innocence. My heart swelled. Then I thought of him in the woods, levelling that blasted gun at us…