It was a tone of voice she hadn't heard him use before outside of a boardroom, and it shocked her to hear it in their home. 'We need to get something straight if we have any kind of a future, Susannah.' (If? They were living together ...) 'These are my kids. They have a mother. I'm not about to confuse them by having you come on to the scene and trying to be another mother to them. You can be their friend. But don't try and be a parent. That's not what I want. And I never, ever, ever want you to raise a hand against any one of them.'

She felt like he'd slapped her. That was the first night they'd fallen asleep without making friends. She was bewildered, angry and hurt, and she'd lain stiffly in the bed beside him, trying to figure out what to do.

She never told anyone what he'd said that night. Not her mother, and definitely not Amelia. No one. She knew what Amelia would have said. She'd have said she should get the hell out before it was too late. And maybe she was right. Maybe she should have done. But she loved him. (Hear the refrain of women throughout the history of the world and time.) She didn't want to start again. She didn't want to be on her own. So she made excuses for him in her head, made them until she'd convinced herself she'd been out of line. That he was right she shouldn't interfere.

And truthfully, she didn't believe, back then, that it would always be that way. She told herself she wouldn't have stayed if she had, although she wasn't sure that she believed herself, even as she said it. Time, she felt, would be bound to change things. Maybe she'd pushed too hard, too soon. But things would change. They would all, surely, find a level, grow together into something that worked. And, in a way, it did. They'd been together for eight years. She'd done the school run, and sat through the school plays and concerts. She'd administered the Calpol, done the algebra problems and trawled through Toys R Us looking for the Christmas gift 'du jour'. It just wasn't the way she had ever thought it would be. She didn't feel like they belonged to her, not in any way. If they loved each other, it was never articulated, or even assumed, by her, them, or their father. These days, she wondered if she'd been right to stay. Or at least, right to stay on Douglas's terms. Once the patterns of a relationship were set, it was hard or was it more like impossible? to change them.

Outside the house now, she took a deep breath, and put her key in the lock. Inside, the kids barely registered her presence Fin didn't look up from his game and Rosie threw only a vague greeting and a wave in her direction, her eyes never leaving the flickering screen. Simon Cowell was bashing someone. It was always Simon Cowell these days. And he was always bashing someone. All the sofa cushions were on the rug, and Fin was lying prostrate on them like a little emperor, while Rosie sprawled across all three of the sofa's seats. Douglas and Daisy were nowhere to be seen.

Her 'hi, guys' didn't get much sensible response. She decided against the kitchen she knew she'd feel compelled to start clearing up, and she really wasn't in the mood, plus she was in a pale-coloured and not inexpensive dress that wasn't intended for domestic tasks and headed instead straight for the stairs. As she'd thought she would be, Daisy was squirrelled away in the room she shared much to her consternation with Rosie, with the phone cord shut in the door, and Death Cab for Cutie playing on the iPod dock. It amazed her that she even knew who was making the noise, but she did. Elizabeth had loaded some stuff on to her iPod a few weeks ago, when she'd been round at Amelia's house. She didn't hate all of it ... She assumed that Douglas was closeted away in his top-floor study. That was his primary refuge from all things domestic, these days. He kept an old-fashioned stereo up there, and a collection of jazz CDs, as well as a bottle of Maker's Mark whisky and an ancient, peeling leather recliner. Daisy called it, in the disparaging tone she had adopted in recent years, his 'man cave'. But he was, instead, in their room. The bed which she'd left unmade was made now, with all the extraneous pillows he complained about neatly in place, just as she would have done it herself. Through the open door to their en suite bathroom she could see that the bath was running. He was pouring bath salts under the tap. He turned when he heard her, and smiled almost sheepishly. The same pizzeria smile. He looked about twenty-five years old when he smiled that way. 'I heard you come in. Thought you'd like a hot bath.'

Then he came to her, and folded her into an embrace. 'I'm so sorry, Susannah.' He spoke into her neck, his hand stroking her hair. 'I was a shit last night, and I'm sorry.' He peeled the jacket off her shoulders, and kissed the side of her neck.

He was good at this. She didn't know if it was deliberate, or just dumb luck, but his apologies were always issued when she was tired enough to accept them rather than prolong whatever aggravation he was apologizing for. So she stood and let him hold her for a moment. Everything about him was so very familiar to her. His touch, his scent, the sound of his voice. She let him unzip the dress, so that it fell to the floor, then let him lead her into the bathroom.

The bath was half full, and he leant over to turn off the taps, pulling a hand through the water to check the temperature. 'It's ready. Why don't you climb in, and I'll go down and get you a drink. What do you want? A cup of tea, or something stronger? Then you'll tell me all about it.'

'Tea. I've got a headache.' She knew she sounded sulky.

His face was full of concern. 'I'm sorry. I'll bring you a pill, shall I?'

She shrugged and smiled, really trying. 'Can't blame you for the headache, at least.'

She shucked off her bra and knickers, and stepped, naked, into the hot bath. Douglas stroked her shoulder as she sat down. There was nothing sexual about the gesture, or about the feeling in the room, despite her nakedness. There never was, when the kids were in the house. She'd learnt that a long time ago.

Amelia had once told her that she and her ex-husband, Jonathan, when they were still married, liked to 'do it' in the mornings on weekends when the kids were small. If the kids were in front of the TV, watching cartoons, she said, they'd be happy and quiet for just long enough. Their dad would come down and settle them, with a bowl of Cheerios and the remote control, make a cup of tea, bring it back up and lock the door behind him. Best fifteen minutes of the weekend, she said. They could be done, she laughed, in time to drink the tea before it got cold.

That didn't work with Douglas. Certainly not in the mornings, and not even at night. Not even if the kids were sound asleep in their beds. At first it had frustrated her, not only sexually, but because it seemed wrong wrong to keep these two key parts of his life so separate and compartmentalized. He'd been insatiable, in the early days. He couldn't get enough of her. Any time, any place. Making up for lost years in a largely sexless marriage, he said. They'd had sex almost every day, in those first few months. She didn't know how he could turn it all off just like that. She'd tried everything to weaken his resolve, used every weapon in her sexual arsenal to persuade him that it was okay, that having quiet, quick sex behind the locked door of their bedroom wasn't going to hurt the kids, but nothing had worked and eventually she'd given up. Sex went absolutely off the agenda when the kids were at home. Another thing she'd never confessed to Amelia.

She lay back in the deep bath and closed her eyes. And the moment she did she saw Rob.

Not as he'd been today. As he'd been then ...

1987.

Rob Rossi had moved with his parents into the village during the summer, apparently. They didn't go to St Gabriel's they were Catholic, not that they went to any church at all which explained why they hadn't registered on Mum's radar. They lived in a house on the other side of the common. Different coach.

For weeks, they didn't speak. But Susannah got very used to looking for him during the day. He was easy to spot, being so tall. And every time she spotted him, her breath caught in her throat. She found herself thinking about him at odd times of the day, and lying in bed at night. She started looking hard at herself in the mirror in the morning. Trying to see what he saw. Wondering if he saw her at all.

Susannah was a typically self-conscious teenager, a little taller than she wanted to be, acutely aware of the relatively new curves in her shape. Amelia had had boobs for ever, but Susannah's were a much more recent development. She recognized, in moments of objective appraisal, that her skin was clearer than most people's her own age, that her eyes a disappointing hazel most of the time were green around the edges, and sparkled when she was happy. Amelia said she had a ski-jump nose and bee-stung lips, damn her, but Susannah knew Amelia was prettier and anyway, she sometimes thought she'd swap all the good bits for her best friend's confident swagger.

She and Rob only had one class together English. He was very quiet there, but if Ichabod called on him, his answers were full, his voice deep. He would smile at her sometimes, shyly, but his eyes always dropped away from her gaze before the smile left his mouth. She wondered if he was making fun of her, if she was staring. He was something of a loner he seemed to be friendly with lots of guys, but no one in particular, and she never saw him talking to girls. He sometimes played football at lunchtime, and sometimes read a magazine she didn't know what sitting against a tree next to the science block. Amelia said he had a sexy-broody thing going on. She said he reminded her of Heathcliff, but Susannah didn't see it she didn't have her best friend's flair for drama to her, he seemed coolly self-contained. Like he didn't need any of them.

One Friday night, sometime in late October, Amelia's mother was driving the two of them home from the cinema and a graphic retelling of the plot of Fatal Attraction was under way when they both saw him, walking along the main road from the bus stop towards his house. He was wearing military-style clothes unfashionably flared blue trousers and a ribbed sweater, with a black beret. There was a girl with him dressed the same way. At first Susannah thought she was a guy.

The following Monday, Amelia who wasn't in the least shy around him, or anyone else sat on the edge of his desk and asked him about it, while they were waiting for English class to start.

'Are you a soldier, then?' Her tone sounded vaguely mocking to Susannah.

Rob looked uncomfortable, as though she'd caught him off guard, though he didn't ask her why she was asking. He shook his head. 'Air cadet.'

'What does that mean?'

'I'm going to be an airman. In the RAF. After "A" levels.'

'We saw you, the other night. Susannah and me.'

He looked at Susannah, then nodded.

'With a girl. Is that your girlfriend?'

He was still looking straight at her, and his cheeks pinked up.

Amelia could be mean when she wanted to be, Susannah thought, even as she felt herself sit forward to hear his answer.

'No. I don't have a girlfriend.'

Amelia nudged Susannah significantly just, thank God, at the moment Mr Blythe walked in and asked them to open the play at page 110, and just before Susannah pinched Amelia's thigh, hard, across the desk.

But despite Amelia's teasing and goading, it was November before Susannah worked up the courage to talk to him herself. They smiled at each other, and there were moments when she convinced herself he was looking for her, too, among a crowd. Sometimes he held her gaze for just a bit longer than he needed to. She always felt, after that happened, that the Ready Brek glow from the television was fuzzing and glowing around her. There was always a huge bonfire in the village, on the common, for Guy Fawkes. They started building it in October everyone in the village contributing and by November the Fifth it was usually vast enough to roast a multitude of guys. The Rotary set up a fireworks display in a field to the north, and a travelling fairground with a small Ferris wheel and bumper cars usually erected its rides on the other side of the common. The whole village came out, so long as it wasn't raining, for the lighting of the bonfire, and the fireworks. Ever since Susannah was a little girl she'd found it exciting something about the darkness, and the unusual presence of everyone on the common at night, along with the relaxation of school-night bedtime. She loved the fireworks best of all. She couldn't watch a fireworks display without getting a lump in her throat. They always made her want to cry.

The bonfire had really taken hold now, having been lit from six or seven different points around its perimeter, and flames licked at the branches near the top. The guys were all ablaze. The fire crackled fantastically, and smelt delicious. It was weird how your front could be so hot your cheeks hurt, while you were still cold in the back. Amelia had gone with Alastair to buy hot cider and toffee apples before the fireworks started. Separated from her parents and Alex, who'd found friends of their own on the other side of the common, and deserted by her friend in her quest for refreshments, Susannah found herself to her combined delight and mortification standing close to where Rob was watching with two middle-aged adults his parents, she presumed. She hadn't sought him out, and she hoped he didn't think so. She couldn't move away Al and Amelia were coming back to this spot, and there was no chance of finding each other again if they got split up now, plus it was crowded out here, and dark, away from the fire. She wasn't sure at first if he'd seen her in the flickering firelight, but suddenly he was next to her. She was quite genuinely afraid she might get so dizzy she'd fall forward into the fire if it weren't for the rope that encircled it to keep those who weren't officious Rotarians at a safe distance. She'd never, never felt like this before.

'Hi.' He spoke first.

'Hi.'

'This is amazing,' Rob offered, gesturing towards the fire.

She nodded and her answer was full of genuine enthusiasm. 'I love it. I think it's my favourite night of the year in the village. Everyone's here.'

'Have you always lived here?'

'Yup. All my life. So this is, like, the sixteenth or seventeenth Bonfire Night I've been to. I'm pretty sure they had me out here when I was a baby.'

'Is it always this big?'

'Think so. Don't know. When you're a kid, things seem bigger, don't they?'

He smiled. 'Where's your friend?'

'Amelia?' Susannah's heart sank, and she felt a sharp stab of disappointment. It was Amelia he was interested in. That figured. Amelia was the flirty one, attracting boys like moths to a flame. Not awkward and shy. She shuffled from foot to foot, realizing that her toes were cold. 'She's gone with my brother to buy drinks and stuff. She'll be back in a minute.'

'Shame.'

She looked at him, and his eyes were sparkling before he looked away. He was almost smiling.

An uncomfortable silence ensued. Susannah trawled her mind for something interesting to say. She was really, really bad at this. The tension was unbearable. Any second now, she just knew, he was going to nod at her and go back to his parents. When she spoke, words tumbled awkwardly out of her mouth. 'We're ... a bunch of us ... we're going to the funfair after we watch the fireworks. Wanna come? I mean, if you like ...'

'Sure.' Rob shrugged, as if he was easy either way.

When the others came back, Amelia smirked at her. Susannah narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips in warning, and Amelia raised a finger to her lips in a shushing motion, winking at her. Alastair chatted easily to Rob, oblivious to the scene.

Susannah still felt utterly breathless and self-conscious as the fireworks began to explode in Technicolor above their heads. The lump came into her throat. Everyone put their heads back to watch, and all around them were the gasps and aaahs of children. It felt like he was so close to her, in the cold and the dark. And she liked how it felt to have him next to her.

When she put her hand down to her side, her coat sleeve brushed against his, and then she felt his hand slide slowly into hers, until their fingers were laced. He squeezed once, but his gaze never left the sky.

Present Day.

August.

So often in recent years it seemed as though England was teasing its people with a handful of hot days in May, prompting a hysterical rush of toenail painting, leg waxing, and strappy top buying, only to turn on the grey rain and chilly breezes in July, but this year, the summer proper was really delivering. The English Riviera was booked up for August, and the tabloids carried pictures every day of Hyde Park full of bikini-clad sunbathers. Doug had had three weekends out on the boat, and gone mahogany in the sun. Susannah had managed to dodge one, claiming a backlog of work that needed to be cleared, but all five of them had been down there last weekend, Daisy sulking because she wasn't with Seth, lying on her stomach all day, slathering herself in Piz Buin, with Fin leaning precariously off the rails while his father barked instructions at him. She wished she loved to sail as much as Doug did, but truthfully, Rosie was the only willing and vaguely useful crew member he had.

The sun was still shining hot, and the air was thick and heavy when Susannah finished work and emerged, blinking mole-like, from her darker, air-conditioned office. She peeled off the cotton cardigan she wore over her coral-pink shift dress to combat the electrical chill of the air conditioning, and headed to the underground. The discernible spring in her step was probably due to the fact that she wasn't heading straight home this evening, though Douglas had offered to barbecue and open a bottle of rose, and had acted quite shirtily when she'd reminded him of her plans. Nor was she, like most of the people who milled sweatily around her, off to the pub to enjoy the August evening with a Pimm's or three. She had a long-standing date to keep, and she was as excited about it as she had been about anything in a while. She was meeting Amelia for an evening at the Porchester Spa in Queensway they went three or four times a year and had been going, pregnancy permitting, since 1993, their first year in London, when they'd discovered it almost by accident.

A truly old-fashioned Victorian municipal bathing house that had first opened in 1929, they'd paid their first, speculative visit one winter's Tuesday night, after a colleague of Amelia's had told her it was as cheap as chips. Which it had been. It was still much cheaper than the other spas that had sprung up in the intervening decades all over the city cheaper still since they'd become members (they'd bought each other a membership for Christmas, both of them thinking they'd had the best, most original idea ever for a present). But that wasn't what kept them going. They had more money these days, and had tried others the Bliss Spa and The Sanctuary and, once, when Susannah had received an unexpected bonus at work, the spa at The Berkeley. But in other places, they'd felt out of place and constrained silly sometimes. Nothing else did the trick the way the Porchester Spa did. Amelia said it was because it was the only one still populated by fat white middle-aged women who didn't care, and that they kept going because it made them feel svelte and young. Susannah thought it was just a little more romantic than that. She loved the space the high ceilings and the original Victorian tiles. She loved that they'd been coming here for so long together. They'd made plans and whispered secrets to each other in here for years, lying side by side in the wet steam, or the dry heat. Squealed together in the ice-cold plunge pool. They'd been here to celebrate promotions, and console broken hearts, and to bitch and moan about bosses, babies and bank managers. They'd been here for Amelia's hen night, obsessing over the details of the impending big day, and, not quite a year afterwards, for her first outing post-Elizabeth, when her engorged breasts had leaked on to the scratchy white towel and she'd cried over her poochy stomach and the way her baby's head smelt. They never brought other people here it was their place and it was almost sacred to Susannah. The management had given the place a big facelift a couple of years ago, and she'd been worried they would have destroyed what was special about it, but they hadn't. Most of the staff had been there as long as she'd been going, and they were as much a part of the experience, with their gruffness and frowns, as the surroundings and the treatments themselves.

This ritual was part of what connected the two of them after all these years. Their lives had taken such different directions. When she'd been young, she'd imagined that they'd do the same things at the same time, always. College, university, careers, marriage, babies, careers again. They'd dreamed subtle variations of the same dreams. And so it had seemed to go, at first. They'd ended up at different universities Susannah studying Law at Bristol, and Amelia French at Manchester but they'd both put in the effort required to stay good friends. They'd spent weekends on each other's floors and gone on holiday together, and ended up each Christmas Day and New Year's Eve in the Coach and Horses in the village. They'd still been close enough after they graduated to eschew their uni mates and live together in Clapham, in a two-double-bed, third-floor flat with a lascivious landlord and a view over the rooftops to the common. She'd met Sean. Amelia had met Jonathan. They'd married within the same thrilling twelve months meeting in their lunch hours to compare John Lewis wedding lists and lace swatches.

It was only as their respective honeymoons ended that their paths began to seriously diverge. Amelia had fallen pregnant quickly, with Elizabeth, and then there had been Victoria two years later, and Sam, her last, a neat and tidy two years after that. She'd given up work after Victoria. She and Jonathan had moved out of Zone 1 to Richmond, and a terraced house with a garden they filled with climbing frames and sandpits. Susannah had stayed at work, through the collapse of her marriage. She'd found refuge in work at first, then she'd rediscovered her passion for what she did, it having been sidelined by her marriage to Sean. She moved on from the law firm where she'd been since her year at law school in Chester. Her ambition had shifted slightly making partner wasn't so crucial. She took a job as legal counsel in a firm of architects. And then she'd found Douglas.

Amelia always said she started shopping in the Boden catalogue around the time Susannah started shopping in Nicole Farhi. They would meet for lunch so that they could tell each other they envied each other's lives, each claiming it made them feel better to do so. Amelia said she longed for 'dry clean only' clothing and her own bank account. Susannah looked into the buggy and dreamed of a baby possetting down her Jaeger jacket. Amelia told bitchy stories about the mummies in her book club, and Susannah carped about her bosses and the undeniable existence of the glass ceiling.

But Susannah was never entirely convinced by Amelia's tales of fear and loathing in South-West London. Amelia didn't compromise she never really had. She was doing exactly what she had always wanted, always planned. She loved her life. She gave marriage and motherhood the same energy and drive she'd given work. Susannah always imagined that the other mothers in the nursery school might have hated her, though she was hard to hate. Her kids were always immaculate, always well mannered. She never bought a cake when she could make one, and she could always make one. No distressing of store-bought mince pies for Amelia.

At first, Susannah had been shocked when Amelia told her she'd asked Jonathan to move out. But she quickly came to see it as another facet of her best friend's bright, fierce nature. She would not stay in a marriage that had become, if not unhappy, then significantly less happy than it had once been. Not for convention, nor for her children, and not for herself. There was no one else. She always said that eventually there would have been, for Jonathan or for her, and that this would have been significantly more damaging to both of them and, above all, for the kids. Better to get out when you still had love for each other, she said. When you stood the best chance of building something new and civilized between the two of you, that protected your children and made a world for them that was workable, and while the possibilities of glittering, shiny futures with other people were still real.

She said she'd watched her own parents coexist for long enough to know that it wasn't the answer. 'My parents thought everything was okay because there was no shouting in my house. They never understood that the silence was far worse.' They'd waited until she'd left home to finally separate, both certain that was the right thing for their daughter. She didn't agree that it was right for any of them. Her dad had moved, first to a flat nearer his work, and then to Spain, once he'd retired, where he now lived in an apartment in a gated community on the Costa Brava with a middle-aged bottle blonde called Sandra who Amelia neither knew nor cared to. He played golf every day Sandra played, too, with a set of pink clubs he'd bought her for a first anniversary present. Amelia always said after she'd seen him which she did rarely, and actually quite grudgingly that she couldn't relate this new guy to the man she'd grown up living alongside. Mum hadn't met anyone else. She still lived in the house Amelia had grown up in rattling around, Amelia called it.

Amelia was a wonderful 'manager', and she'd managed this latest change wonderfully, as ever. Jonathan had moved out. The kids were fine. Genuinely fine, not just appearing so, Susannah believed. Amelia had never looked better than she looked these days. If Susannah had been waiting for a meltdown, she should have known better.

Susannah's own life seemed to her, sometimes, to be in stark contrast. It was a series of compromises. Connected episodes of not quite being happy enough. She sometimes wished she had Amelia's courage, although what exactly she should be brave about, she wasn't sure.

She greeted the receptionist, who'd worked here for years, and went to the changing room, undressing quickly, pulling a cotton robe on, and putting her clothes in a locker.

Amelia was there before her, as usual in the first, least steamy steam room their habitual meeting place. She'd stripped naked always the same unselfconscious girl, even three kids later and covered the top of herself with an old blue and white striped cotton sarong she'd had for ever. Susannah remembered her coming out of the sea in Mykonos a hundred years ago in a string bikini, nut brown and super skinny, and wrapping herself in it. Her hair was pulled back and she had some sort of thick greyish gunk all over her face.

She hadn't seen Amelia since Alex and Chloe's wedding, though they'd spoken many times on the phone. It was unusual for them not to speak three or four times a week. It was unusual, come to think of it, that they hadn't seen each other for this long. And this, as she might have expected, was Amelia's conversational opener.

'So, have you been avoiding me? I haven't seen you for weeks. The kids think you've emigrated!'

'I've been busy. Besides, you've been away.'

Amelia and the kids had spent ten days on a Sunsail holiday in Crete. Amelia had spent the whole time sending Susannah hilarious texts about her ineptitude and phone photos of the kids expertly sailing Lasers around an azure bay.

Amelia stared at her hard, then shook her head. 'I've been back a week. You've been avoiding me.'

'I was waiting for the tan to fade a bit.'

'No. Avoidance. You always do this when things are off with you.'

'Nothing's "off".' She'd told Amelia about the wedding. About the fight with Douglas.

But not about Rob.

There was no point dissembling now. Amelia was like her conscience. It had been that way between them for years now. But there was nothing to tell, anyway. A chance encounter with an old boyfriend, that was all. Why did it feel like a big deal?

She picked up the tube of face mask from the floor by Amelia's lounger, and squeezed a dollop on to her fingers, before rubbing it slowly on to her cheeks. 'I saw Rob.'

'Get out!' Amelia sat up sharply, and the sarong fell away, momentarily revealing her right nipple.

'At the church. He was there with Lois.'

'Blimey.' Amelia nodded. 'Of course she was there. How long's it been?'

'Years.'

'How did he look?'

'He looked ... like Rob. He looked great. He called me Susie.' She shouldn't have said that.

Amelia's stare sharpened. 'What's that face mean?'

'What face?'

'That face. You don't need a mirror to see what face you're making.'

'Nor do you.'

'So, what's he up to these days? Still in the RAF? Is he married? Kids?'

'I don't know.' Susannah shrugged.

'You didn't talk to him?' Amelia asked incredulously.

'Not really. Alastair rescued me. I'd already had the waterworks, in the church. I think he thought it wasn't a good idea ...'