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certain.
    David burst in, a whirl of movement and vitality, and the house seemed to shrink.
    ‘Sorry, sorry,’ he spluttered, cheerfully and without a hint of contrition. He paused to hang up his coat, fair hair flopping over a broad forehead. Leila felt as though he’d recharged her just by walking through the front door.
    ‘My beautiful wife!’ Briskly crossing the hall, he draped his tall frame around her, running his mouth along one of the tight plaits that covered her head. ‘Ah, my favourite silky shirt. What happens if I pull on this little bow at the back?’
    Leila wriggled away, tapping her watch, trying to look severe. ‘What time d’you call this?’
    ‘Sorry! Got cornered by Dora.’
    ‘You too?’
    He scratched his long nose. ‘Didn’t make my escape until the queue of customers behind me was halfway down the High Street, rioting. I had to get a writ of habeas corpus.’
    It’s all right. Everything’s all right. She put her hands on her hips. ‘That wretched card had a nervous breakdown. Half of Birmingham was watching.’
    ‘Oh, no!’ Laughing, he kissed her. There was a fan of creases at the outer corners of his eyes, so that he seemed permanently to be smiling. It gave his face an ageless quality. ‘I forgot to pay it off.’
    She leaned happily into his warmth, prolonging the moment. Then, reluctantly, she whispered in his ear, ‘You do realise that your guests are due to arrive in just under four minutes?’
    ‘Blimey!’ He was gone, thundering up the stairs, tearing off his dog collar as he turned the corner. It was a toy house, and a dolls’ staircase. David, long-legged and athletic, could spring up it in three bounds.
    ‘Your job this evening is to stop your father drinking too much,’ she yelled after him. ‘If he says anything smutty I swear I’ll break that Roman conk he’s so proud of.’
    ‘Allow me.’ She could hear David’s chuckle, then a thud—shower door—and the splash of running water.
    He was still upstairs when the doorbell rang. That will certainly be the in-laws, thought Leila sourly. Don’t even have the decency to be late. I’ll bet they’ve been skulking around the corner in their car, waiting for seven thirty-one. She dragged her most welcoming smile out of its box and glued it into position. She’d had plenty of practice at sticking on smiles, since David took this job. On the way to the front door, she checked her expression in the long mirror. It looked like rigor mortis.
    Must look them in the eye. Must look them in the eye.
    Throwing open the door, the curate’s wife stood well back. Her face was alight with radiant welcome.
    ‘Hilda! Christopher! How lovely!’
    Eight o’clock. Angus and Elizabeth were late, of course. Bless them.
    Leila had run out of excuses not to join the others in the miniature sitting room. There had never been open hostilities in her dealings with David’s mother; never, in fifteen years. Instead, uneasy tension spilled into short bursts of sniper fire on both sides. It was exhausting. Blatant warfare might have been easier.
    Lingering in the kitchen, she could hear David regaling them with that awful story about the coffin that floated when it was lowered into the grave. After the shocked laughter, she made out snatches of Hilda’s voice. ‘Monica’s much in demand,’ she heard, and ‘Michael’s been forecasting this recession for years.’
    Well, bully for Michael and bloody Monica.
    There was an agenda, of course. David, like his younger brother and sister, had also been a source of pride until he gave it all up, well on his way up the management ladder in a tentacular agrochemicals company. Hilda was still grief-stricken at his abandonment of her ambitions.
    Now her mother-in-law’s sugary tones took on a strident edge. ‘Leila? Aren’t you going to join us? Can I help, at all?’
    Bugger . Cornered, Leila blew out her cheeks and marched into the enemy camp, smile firmly fixed in place. Christopher