‘It’s been a great day,’ Alex said.

‘Yes, it has. You’ve been terrific.’

‘Have I?’

‘The kids are so happy. Haven’t you seen?’

But it wasn’t quite what he wanted to hear.

‘What about you?’ he insisted.

‘It’s not about me. It’s about you and them. Alex, I’ve never seen them so much at ease with you. And Bobby-surely you’ve noticed how he-?’

He kissed her.

He did it so fast that she had no time to resist. Surprise had always brought him results in business, and for a moment he thought it was working here. Corinne didn’t try to push him away, but neither did she embrace him back. Instead, she remained so still that it finally got through to him.

‘Corinne-’

‘Alex, please don’t. It’s been so lovely. Don’t spoil it.’

‘Is it spoiling it to say that you’re still my wife and I still love you?’

‘Don’t talk like that,’ she begged.

‘Corinne, what is it? I thought that when we’d been apart for a while-’

‘I’d “see sense”? That’s how you think of it, isn’t it? You think I had to be crazy to leave you, and that I’ll realise I made a mistake.’

‘Are you going to say you didn’t?’

‘Yes, I am saying that. I wanted a home, husband and children, and all I got was the children. They’re lovely kids, but I wanted a husband as well.’

‘And you couldn’t love me?’

‘You weren’t there. You haven’t been there for years.’

His eyes kindled. ‘Tell me about this man you want to love. He wouldn’t be called Jimmy by any chance?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘Is it? I can see that he’s a lot of things I’m not-things you might want.’

‘Yes, he is. He’s kind and dependable, and I always know where I am with him, but-’

Corinne checked herself, on the verge of saying, But he’s not you.

It had been a risk, asking Alex to stay for Christmas, but she’d told herself that she must take it for the children’s sake. Now she knew it had been a mistake. Her love was not sufficiently buried, or perhaps not sufficiently dead. It threatened her too often and too piercingly.