“There are literally thousands of them,” she said, “and they’ll all be on MySpace. You’ll only get unsigned ones to come, obviously, although it would be great to have one slightly bigger name.”

“Would a slightly bigger name come?” asked Georgia, and Fred said they might, if the idea appealed, and there was going to be some good publicity.

“Which there will be, won’t there?”

“There certainly will,” said Abi coolly. “And quite big bands will bring their fee right down if it’s for charity. The smaller ones will probably do it for cost. Just to get the chance to play and be heard. We’re just going to have to hit the keyboard, Georgia, e-mail all their agents. Those who have them. We also want quite a good spread of music styles. Like rock, obviously, but also jazz, bit of folk even, for the families…”

It was William who came up with the really clever idea: “I was talking to a bloke the other night in the pub, telling him what we were going to do; he was awfully impressed. Anyway, he’d been to a small festival the other side of Bath, and what they did was have a whole load of sort of auditions-play-offs, he called them-called Battle of the Bands, in pubs. Each area fielded a few bands and they played in the pub and the punters voted and the winner was put forward to play. He said it was great because everyone who’d voted wanted to go the festival and hear their band. So they got loads more people than they would have done.”

“That is such a good idea,” said Georgia, “wonderful local publicity too. You are clever, William. Isn’t that clever, Fred?”

Fred said it was a good idea. “Only thing is, what sort of standard would the bands be? Bit of a gamble.”

“No worse a gamble than if we chose them from MySpace,” said Abi briskly, “and obviously we’d hear them too, and if they were dreadful we wouldn’t book them. We should get cracking on this straightaway. William, you give us a list of villages, or small towns I s’pose might be better, not too close together, with really good pubs that you think’d cooperate, and we’ll get some flyers done… I can run them off at work. Oh, God, if only we had some money. And a name. We’ve got to have a name. Georgia, you’re the creative one; get us a name.”

William felt rather pleased at having made such a large contribution to what he thought of as the theatrical side. Everyone-including him-had seen his role as strictly functional: providing the site, finding the contractors, organising the infrastructure… The cost of providing power lines and building the arena was eye-watering, and he hoped his father would never find out. They had settled on a ticket fee of thirty pounds, children half price; it sounded a lot, but not set against the thousands they were going to have to find. In his darker moments, he worried that they wouldn’t make any money at all, just a whacking loss, and half wished he had said no in the first place. But then he thought of the heady pleasure of the thing, the sense of purpose it had given them all, and of creating something so original and exciting, and he knew it was worth it.

And besides, it meant he could see so much of Abi.

The hurt of the memories had gone; he just longed now to go back to where they had been. She clearly felt quite differently; and working with her on the festival, seeing her more on her home turf, so to speak, he imagined himself through her eyes: very sound, nice, bit dull, someone she had once undoubtedly been fond of, and had fun with, a good friend, but who really was not in her orbit of consideration for anything more…

Laura was sitting in her mother’s kitchen, crying. She was in complete despair over Charlie. Jonathan’s moving out had made him slightly less tense, but his behaviour was no better. Indeed, his year tutor had said that his work was increasingly erratic, “and quite honestly, Mrs. Gilliatt, he seems to have lost most of his social skills as well.”

She had tried everything: persuasion, threats, bribes, even emotional blackmail: “you could do it for me, Charlie, even if you won’t for Dad. It upsets me so much, your behaving like this, and life is quite… quite difficult just at the moment.”

She got little response beyond the now horribly predictable shrug; he clearly felt she must bear some of the blame for his father’s behaviour.

Occasionally she thought she had made a breakthrough; one night he had found her crying, after the girls had gone to bed. He had sat down beside her on the sofa, put his arms round her, and asked her if there was anything he could do.

“I’m so sorry, Mum; it must be horrible for you.”

Laura told him it would make her feel better if he started working at school again, and told him what his year tutor had said; that had been a mistake.

“Mum, I don’t mind helping at home, or trying to cheer the girls up, but I can’t go back to being good little Charlie again. He’s gone. Dad’s sent him packing.”

“But, Charlie, that’s not fair. To me or to you. You could perfectly well start working again if you wanted to.”

“Yeah, but I don’t want to. Maybe in time, but not right now. I don’t see the point.”

“The point is your future, Charlie. Doesn’t that matter to you?”

He shrugged. “Not much, no. I couldn’t care less about it.”

“I don’t know what to do, Mummy,” Laura said now, blowing her nose. “He’s just wrecking his own life and I can’t get that through to him.”

“I’m no psychologist, darling, but I’d say he was feeling completely disillusioned with everything. He idolised his father and he feels utterly let down. And not just with Jonathan, but Jonathan’s way of life. Why should he try to be like him, to emulate him in any way, when he despises him so much?”

“But that doesn’t make sense!”

“I think you’d find it did to Charlie. He’s rejected the way Jonathan brought him up, and that includes working hard and doing well.”

“Oh, God,” said Laura, “it’s all so hideous. Tell me what to do. Mummy, I can’t think straight anymore.”

“Nothing for now, darling. Give it time. You have no idea how things might turn out.”

“Yes, I do. Jonathan’s not coming back, because I couldn’t bear it if he did. Charlie won’t forgive Jonathan, or change his attitude in any way. I can’t see how anything could change.”

“Laura, just now neither can I. I only know, after living for quite a long time, that things do. Stuff happens, as the horrible expression goes. Try to be patient.”

“Oh, Mummy, you know what I often think?”

“No, what do you often think?”

“That if it hadn’t been for that bloody car crash, everything would have been all right. I’d never have known about Abi Scott; it would have played itself out; Jonathan would have got sick of her…”

“He might not have.”

“Well, thanks for that.”

“Darling, don’t get me wrong. I think what Jonathan’s done is dreadful, unforgivable. I can hardly bear to see you so unhappy. And if he wanted to come back, if you did forgive him, I’d find it very hard to accept. All I’m saying is that men do seem to need these… relationships sometimes. Well, saying they need them rather overdignifies them. They decide they’re going to have them. Especially at Jonathan’s age, it’s a grab at their lost youth. If it hadn’t been Abi Scott, it might have been someone else.”

“Daddy didn’t do that, did he?” She stared at her mother, suddenly understanding for a brief moment how Charlie felt, the shock of betrayal.

“No, he didn’t; he never cheated on me, thank God, but several of my friends had to endure it. Some of the marriages survived. Well, most of them, actually. They did in those days. And there was a lot of turning a blind eye, pretending you didn’t know.”