Dan leant over and kissed her again. ‘Would you think it was really uncool if I said I loved you?’

‘I’d think it was really uncool if you didn’t.’

Poppy gazed at Damian’s dark sleeping head, displayed to good effect against the plump pillows and crisp white sheets of their quirky little Shoreditch House bedroom. They were staying in London for a few days before going to spend Christmas with Damian’s large, rowdy family in Wales. They planned to pick up Poppy’s mother on Christmas Eve, after the three of them had had ‘Christmas lunch’ with Poppy’s father in his dementia care home. It was better this way: leaving the home these days rendered him incoherent with fear, and they would make it as festive as they could, with presents and crackers and King’s College Cambridge on the CD player in his room. The little details that reminded her and her mother (and to a tiny extent, they hoped, her father) of past Christmases were probably the most heartbreaking, Poppy thought.

The Shoreditch House rooms, with cool and commendable honesty, were classed as ‘Tiny’, ‘Small’ and ‘Small +’, and they had gone for a ‘Small+’, which had a little balcony looking out over the rooftops of East London, wooden shutters and Scandinavian-inspired tongue-and-groove panelling on the walls. Everything was white, except for a raspberry-pink cashmere blanket that had fallen onto the floor as they’d slept. Feeling suddenly chilly as she saw the snow falling outside, Poppy picked it up and wrapped it around both herself and her sleeping husband.

Her heart tightened as she thought how close she’d come to losing him. She was never going to take him for granted again, that was for sure.

Poppy had been far more shaken than she’d let on about catching him snogging little Juanita. She had never had cause to be jealous of anybody or anything in her charmed life, and it wasn’t an experience she relished. Finally, she’d understood how Damian must have felt when he’d had his suspicions about both Ben and Jack Meadows.

After finding Damian at La Hacienda, Lars and Bella had stayed on in Albuquerque for a couple of days, until Bella, missing Andy enormously, had managed to get a flight back to London. Lars was happy to drive the Cadillac back to New York, but this time was going to take the scenic route, he’d said, laughing. Poppy hoped he hadn’t found it too lonely. She loved Lars to bits, and knew that she owed him one, massively.

Deciding she needed to take her wifely duties seriously, Poppy had declared that she and Damian were going to take advantage of the New Agey nature of New Mexico, to dry out for a bit, eat healthily (God, did she need it after their revolting diet during the road trip), embark on a journey of yoga, meditation and whatever other hippy practices they could lay their hands on, and get to know one another all over again. Sober. It had worked. They had driven out into the desert, gazed at spectacular sunsets and actually talked properly for probably the first time since they’d moved to the States – Poppy having been so all-consumed with her new career, and Damian with both resentment and booze.