‘I need to know if my husband was worth all those tears. Mine, and yours.’

‘He loved you, April,’ she tried. ‘He loved you so much.’

‘I don’t need you to explain his feelings for me. I want you to explain his feelings for you,’ hissed April. She stretched out her arm and unfurled her fingers to reveal the heart-shaped stone.

Bree took a stumbling step back. ‘I can’t …’

‘Do you want me to ask Callum?’

‘No, please. Please don’t do this.’

Bree’s hazel eyes were wide, and April fed off her fear. ‘Then tell me. It’s not like you’d be destroying my marriage, just the memory of it.’

Bree retreated further into the kitchen. She couldn’t face April, but neither would she turn her back. She settled for a sideways position and her knuckles turned white as she gripped the edge of the countertop. ‘It wasn’t something we planned,’ she whispered.

‘That’s original.’

‘I mean it,’ Bree insisted. It was her turn for her voice to shake. ‘We were out for drinks with the team last Christmas. We were drunk; we shared a taxi home; Callum was away overnight …’

April’s shoulder knocked against the doorjamb. They had been here. In this house. Together. ‘That wasn’t the first time,’ she said. ‘You took afternoons off, the first was in November – or was it? For all I know, this has been going on forever. I was worried when you and Jason first became friends. He said there was nothing going on, but it was the perfect opportunity, wasn’t it? I was at uni, and you were still single.’

‘No, no,’ Bree said. She took a glass from the drainer and filled it from the nearest bottle. Her face twisted as she knocked back a slug of vodka. ‘We didn’t … When I met Jason, he made it clear that he loved you. We had one drunken kiss, that was all, but he wouldn’t let it go further, and I accepted that.’

‘But you spent ten years trying to tempt him away.’

‘No I didn’t,’ she said. ‘Jason was my best friend, and yes, I loved him, but I never tried to break you up. Those afternoons together, it was when Callum and I were going through a rough patch and I needed a shoulder to cry on. Jason took me out so we could talk, but nothing happened then. It wasn’t meant to be what it became.’

‘If it were so innocent, why didn’t I know any of this?’

Daring to look at April, Bree’s quivering smile pleaded with her to stop, but April remained unmoved, forcing her to continue. ‘Jason and I were comfortable with each other, and when he started sending me daft messages to cheer me up, I responded. I don’t know how they became more explicit.’

‘Sexting?’

‘Neither of us imagined it was going to lead somewhere.’