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from the hall and Hope looked over Jack’s shoulder to see five anxious faces staring back at her.
    ‘For fuck’s sake,’ Susie said, grabbing a handful of Hope’s dress so she could drag her over to the sink, seize her wrist in a punishing grip and force her hand under the gushing tap.
    Instantly the pain became less inner and much more outer and Hope almost welcomed the stinging agony of icy-cold water sluicing against her damaged flesh. The skin on her palm had blistered and bubbled and the sharp waves of pain were beginning to fade into a nagging throb that Hope focused on, matching her breaths to the rhythm of each pulsation, because if she had to think about anything else, what she’d just seen … what she’d heard … the two of them …
    ‘Stop touching me,’ she said in a low voice, still firmly looking down at her hand, because even glimpsing the peach silk of Susie’s top out of the corner of her eye made Hope forget that she was trying to be all Zen about her pain and instead long to gouge Susie’s heart out with the potato peeler. ‘Get off me.’
    ‘You have to promise you’ll keep your hand under the tap,’ Susie demanded, but she was already letting go so Allison could take her place and rub Hope‘s back in soothing circles.
    ‘You OK?’ she asked Hope softly.
    Hope shook her head. ‘Alli, everything’s so fucked up,’ she whispered.
    ‘No, it’s all good. Really. The pudding’s still intact,’ Allison told her cheerfully. ‘You’d think the dish would have shattered.’
    ‘It’s going to get cold,’ Hope said, trying to get away from the sink so she could salvage something from the evening, even if it was just her brioche bread-and-butter pudding. ‘I need to put it back in the oven.’
    ‘Where do you think you’re going? I’ll sort it out,’ said Lauren, sifting through the kitchen debris to find the oven gloves, then crouching down to pick up the dish. ‘You need to keep your hand under that tap for ten to twenty minutes, then we need to wrap it in clingfilm.’
    ‘Yes, thank you, Florence Nightingale,’ Allison snapped, even though her hands were gentle as she continued to rub Hope’s back. ‘You’re not the only one who’s a qualified first-aider.’
    ‘Are you sure you’re all right, Hopita?’ asked Jack, and Hope swivelled round again to see him standing by the back door, next to Susie, and the depth of his deception struck her anew and the pain rose up again and roared.
    ‘Do I fucking look like I’m fucking all right?’ she shouted, wrenching away from Allison and the cold water. ‘Do I really look like everything in my world is sunshine and rainbows right now?’
    Jack reared back but he didn’t look guilty. He looked concerned, as if Hope’s pain was his pain. ‘C’mon, Hopey, stiff upper lip,’ he said gently. ‘Do you think you need to go to A&E?’
    Everyone was looking at her warily, as if they were waiting for another flash of temper, and Hope knew that this wasn’t the time or the place. She turned away and stuck her hand back under the tap so she didn’t have to look at anyone. ‘I’m fine,’ Hope insisted, slightly astounded at how steady her voice was. ‘It’s just the shock that’s making me act like a crazy lady.’
    There was an almost indecent stampede by some of her guests to leave the scene of the crime, and once Jack and Susie had gone back to the dining room after several more updates on the state of Hope’s mental and physical health, only Allison and Lauren lingered. ‘You sure you’re OK, Hopey?’ Allison asked again. ‘I mean, you’re not usually such a pain wimp.’
    ‘Yeah, you’re very stiff of lip,’ Lauren added, as Hope finally turned off the tap, cast a cursory look at the raised welts on her hand, which still stung like a swarm of angry wasps had done their worst, and started rooting in the kitchen junk drawer for the clingfilm.
    ‘It’s just … well …’ Hope paused. She knew that she could