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Later that day, I scooped up Anna from the school gates, having collapsed the back seats in the car so I could accommodate her bike.

‘She's arrived!’ Anna jumped about excitedly on the pavement as I wrestled with a recalcitrant wheel that refused to turn in on itself.

‘Yes, she has. Anna, can you just—’

‘Polly, my horse has arrived!’ she called to a friend, running to get her bus.

Polly stopped in awe. ‘Ohmygod, you're soo lucky?’ She ran on, as the lucky one jigged about beside me.

‘Did you bring my riding things?’

‘Damn, I forgot.’

‘Mum!’ she groaned. ‘Never mind I'll borrow Phoebe's. Does Caro like her? Molly? What does she think?’

‘Um, she hasn't really had a proper look. Darling, could you just push that pedal in so I can – bugger. The chain's come off. Now I've got oil all over me!’

‘But they put her in a stable, didn't they? Why hasn't she had a proper—’

‘Anna, just help me with this sodding bike!’ I screamed as my hand went painfully through the spokes. ‘Shit!’

‘So-rry.’ She rolled her eyes theatrically as though I only had to ask. Together we heaved it on board. ‘Mum, d'you think you could not swear so much?’ she whispered as we jammed it in tight. ‘It's like you've got Tourette's or something. None of my friends' mums do.’

‘Hi, Evie!’ one such saintly mother, a scrubbed, unhigh-lighted paragon with a Ph.D. in micro-bleeding-whatever, hailed us from across the road.

I lathered on a smile as I turned and shut the boot. ‘Tabitha. Hi.’

‘Got the dog in there too?’ she called jovially.

I laughed, but it had a hollow ring to it. This was a reference to a recent occasion, when, feeling my life lacked substance, I'd joined a few mums for a morning dog walk, something they apparently squeezed in effortlessly between dropping their daughters off at school and rushing off to split the atom at the University. Knowing they took it quite seriously I'd carefully put in floral wellies, a dog rug, a towel for Brenda's muddy paws, and driven to their habitual meeting place at Christ Church meadows. Sadly, when I opened the boot, I'd forgotten the dog.

‘That's it!’ I chortled now. ‘Got everything in here – bike, dog, kitchen sink – busy busy busy! Must fly, Tabitha!’

Anna looked stricken as we got in the car. ‘Can you not say things like that either, Mum?’

‘Like what?’

‘“Busy busy busy.” And by the way, your jeans are way too low.’

There was no one about when we got to the farm. I opened the front door and hollered up the stairs, shouted my way around downstairs, then roamed around the garden yelling, ‘Caro!’

‘There!’

Anna spotted her, down by her marquee on the other side of the river. She was walking strangely, bent double like a gorilla, with a bucket in her hand. We hurried down the lawn and leaped across the stream via the stepping stones to join her.

‘I'm so sorry, Caro,’ I panted as we followed the grassy path through the cow parsley, carefully mown for her brides, ‘really sorry. I'll sort Molly out, you just tell me what to do.’ I'd already briefed Anna in the car that over-the-top contriteness was the order of the day here. ‘This is all you need with everything else going on. Oh Lord, what's happened to the marquee? Here, let me.’

Caro, still bent at the waist, was working her way along the pink and white canvas, wiping it down with great sweeping strokes. I picked up the bucket to move it closer to her.

‘Yuck.’ I dropped it abruptly. ‘Smells like—’

‘Puke, which is exactly what it is.’ She straightened up to look at me, hand in the small of her back. ‘We had a hooray wedding here yesterday, against my better judgement, and after they'd alfresco bonked their way round the bushes, they were sick in the herbaceous borders. Some hero helpfully sprayed the marquee with it too. We didn't have to feed the dog yesterday there was so much sick about, and I'm still finding condoms in the bushes.’

‘Oh!’

She picked up her bucket and marched off to attend to another hot spot.

‘And there was a punch-up on the dance floor,’ she said