‘And you believed him?’

‘Leo never lied to me.’

‘Oh, I forgot – the special relationship between you and my father.’

She said nothing.

‘Wow, Ginger! All that stuff you told me about infidelity! All your hard-earned wisdom about the high price of fucking around! And I never realised where you got it all from, not until I saw you sitting in the public gallery when my dad was standing in the dock. Then I knew everything.’

She stared at her hands, her wedding ring glinting, and then looked at me with eyes hooded with embarrassment.

‘Neither of us wanted it to happen.’

‘Oh, that’s all right then.’

‘It was over in the course of a summer.’

‘A summer fling.’

‘Something like that. Spike and I were having our problems – and so were your dad and mum.’ She reached for the bottle of Shiraz. ‘It’s all years ago now.’

‘But it always makes me wonder, Ginger. Is my mum toxic because of my father’s women? Or did my father run to those women – like you – because my mum’s toxic?’

‘Jen’s not toxic. It’s just hard. All of it. Finding someone. Staying together. Keeping the passion. Staying faithful. Wanting something that you already have. Come on – you should understand that, Tara.’

And I did.

‘But you should have seen him in that prison, Ginger. I never saw anywhere like that place. It’s like there’s no air in there, you can’t breathe inside all those walls and locked doors. I hate to see my dad in that place, Ginger, I hate it so much. It feels like lives have stopped in there. He doesn’t deserve it, he’s a good man, a kind man, and I know he doesn’t deserve to be punished like that.’

‘Sorry,’ Ginger said, her voice cracking. ‘Sorry that I told him about you and Caine. Sorry me and Leo had … our thing. Sorry about all of it.’

I poured the remains of the bottle into my glass as a gale of dumb laughter came from the living room.

‘I’m proud of him, Ginger. Proud of what he did for me. Proud of what he’s doing for me.’

She lightly touched my arm and I grabbed her hand and pressed it against my cheek. She came to my arms and we embraced. We were both crying now.

‘I told him because he loves you, Tara, and I told him because I love you, too.’

I nodded, unable to speak. And then yet again, we heard the laughter of the men in the living room. Our heads turned towards the sound and, in that moment, they felt like total strangers. Our husbands.

CHRISTIAN

Spike sprawled on the floor with a glass of red wine in one hand and an original vinyl copy of my Highway to Hell LP in the other.

Marlon and Buddy sat either side, staring up at him with naked adoration.

‘Now this record,’ Spike told them. ‘This record is stone-cold musical genius.’