‘Woman,’ Janie corrected. ‘She’s a woman, Harry. You need to stop referring to her as a girl.’

He had continued to swish his wine as he raised his eyebrows, questioningly.

‘Any female over the age of eighteen is a woman. You wouldn’t refer to the men as boys.’

‘What difference does it make?’ he had asked, seemingly baffled.

‘It makes her sound like a schoolchild. It undermines the issue.’

‘I really don’t think it does,’ he’d said, taking a sip. ‘Anyway, the fact is she handed her notice in today. She left this afternoon, after Mike agreed to it.’

‘Right.’ Janie rolled her eyes.

‘It’s a good thing.’

‘Because it means you can forget about it?’ she asked.

‘Well, there’s no case to follow up now, is there?’

‘Other than the fact Mike is still working for you? No, I suppose not.’

‘Janie?’ Harry hung his head. ‘You make it sound like you’re not on my side.’

‘I just don’t think you should paper over it.’

‘But Mike – seriously? You know he’s an awkward fellow. He can barely look at me half the time when he’s talking to me. He talks over me, for Christ’s sake. I don’t believe there’s a problem.’ He put his glass down and looked away.

Janie had turned back to the oven and wondered whether Mia Anderson saw it that way. Someone should be fighting. She really did wonder if she should try to have another lunch with Mia soon, but then their last meet-up had been an odd occasion and Janie wasn’t particularly sure about her after that.

Now, Lucy was asking what the problem was, and Janie wondered why she had suddenly spurted out the news about the bullying at Harry’s office and wondered if it was maybe her little way of getting back at him for the fact she’d seen him taking Laura Denning to a wine bar – something neither of them had mentioned.

And then she wondered if it was more than that that had made her spill the gossip. Maybe she was just sick of her husband avoiding responsibility.

‘A woman at the office has reported a man for bullying her,’ Janie told her friends. ‘I don’t know much about it.’

‘It goes on throughout life,’ Anna said. ‘I bet that man was a bully at school too.’

‘To be honest, I doubt he was,’ Janie admitted. She had known Mike a long time. ‘If anything, he was probably the kid being picked on.’

‘But it doesn’t mean they don’t have to do something about it.’

‘No. No, it doesn’t mean that,’ Janie said.