Anyway, it’s fine. She’s gone outside the tent and I’m sitting by the Mexican band, drinking a Diet Coke to dilute the tequila. A guy in a poncho handed me a tambourine a few moments ago, and he looked so eager I didn’t have the heart to say no. So I’m banging it and singing in what I think is pretty good Spanish (“Aheya-aheya-aheya-aheya”) and trying not to picture Suze and Tarquin standing on the steps of a divorce court, when suddenly there she is, back again.

My heart gives this almighty swoop and my tambourine falls limply to my side. She’s standing by the flap of the tent, her face flushed, breathing hard, looking totally freaked out.

“What happened?” I venture as she approaches. “Suze, are you OK?”

“Bex, the trees on our estate,” she mutters feverishly. “The trees. Do you remember anything about them? Anything at all?”

Trees? What is she going on about?

“Um, no,” I say cautiously. “I don’t know anything about trees. Suze, focus. What happened? How were things left?”

“I don’t know.” She’s looking bleak.

“You don’t know?” I stare at her. “How can you not know? What did he say?”

“We talked. I told him. I mean, he didn’t quite understand to begin with….” She rubs her nose.

OK, I can just imagine the conversation. Suze saying, I’ve had this dreadful thing happen, Tarkie, and Tarkie thinking she’s lost her mascara.

“Did you actually tell him?” I demand severely. “Does he actually know what’s happened?”

“Yes.” She swallows. “Yes, he…he got it in the end. I mean, the signal was pretty patchy.”

“And?”

“He was really shocked. I think I’d kidded myself he might have guessed…but he hadn’t.”

Honestly. Of course he hadn’t guessed. This is Tarkie. Only I don’t say this to Suze, because she’s in full flight.

“I kept saying I was sorry and it wasn’t as bad as he probably imagined”—Suze gulps—“and that I couldn’t, you know, bring myself to go the whole way with Bryce, and he said, Was he supposed to be grateful for that?”

Good point, Tarkie, I think silently. Although also: Good point, Suze. I mean, she wasn’t actually unfaithful, was she? In the legal sense.

(Is there a legal sense? I must ask Luke; he’ll know.)

(Actually, no, I won’t ask Luke or he’ll wonder why I want to know, and that could lead to all sorts of misunderstandings, which I really don’t need right now.)

“Anyway, in the end I said we need to meet up and talk, as soon as possible,” Suze continues, her voice quivering. “And he said no.”

“No?” I gape at her.

“He said he was doing something very important for your dad and he wasn’t going to interrupt it. And then the signal finally went. So.” Suze shrugs, as though she’s not bothered, but I can see her hands clenching and unclenching nervously.

“So that was the end of the conversation?” I say disbelievingly.

“Yes.”

“So you don’t know how things stand?”

“Not really.” She sinks onto a barstool next to me and I gaze at her, feeling slightly dumbstruck. This is all wrong. The whole point of ringing your husband for a full and frank confession is that you talk everything through, and by the end you’re either going to split up or you’ve made up.

I mean, isn’t it?

The trouble with Tarkie is, he doesn’t watch TV, so he has no idea how these things go.

“Suze, you need to buy some box sets,” I say fervently. “Tarkie has no point of reference.”

“I know. He didn’t say anything like I thought he would.”

“Did he say he needed some space?”

“No.”

“Did he say, How can I trust anything you say now?”

“No.”

“Well, what did he say?”

“He said he could understand me being tempted by Bryce and he’d fallen under Bryce’s spell too…”

“Very true.” I nod.

“…but we were Cleath-Stuarts, and Cleath-Stuarts don’t compromise; it’s all or nothing.”

“All or nothing?” I pull a face. “What did he mean by that?”

“I don’t know!” wails Suze. “He wasn’t clear. And then he started talking about this famous tree we have on the Letherby estate, Owl’s Tower.” The freaked-out look returns to her eyes. “You know how all our biggest trees have names?”

I do know. In Suze’s spare room, there’s a booklet about the trees, and I have tried to read it, except I fall asleep every time I reach Lord Henry Cleath-Stuart bringing back seeds from India in 1873.

“Talking about a tree is good!” I exclaim encouragingly. “It’s a very good sign. It says, I want our marriage to last. Suze, if he’s talking about trees, I think you’re OK.”

“You don’t understand!” wails Suze again. “I don’t know which tree Owl’s Tower is! We’ve got millions of trees called Owl’s Something. And there was one really famous one which was struck by lightning and died. He might be talking about that one.”

“Oh God.” I stare at her, my confidence slightly dented. “Really?”

“Maybe Tarkie’s saying that Bryce is the lightning bolt and now our marriage is a charred stump with smoke rising from it.” Suze’s voice quivers.

“But maybe he’s not,” I counter. “Maybe Owl’s Tower is some really healthy oak which is still standing after lots of trials and tribulations. Didn’t you ask him which tree it was?”

Suze looks more agonized than ever.

“I couldn’t admit I didn’t know,” she says in a small voice. “Tarkie always says I should take more interest in the trees on the estate. So last year I told him I’d been round with the head groundsman and it was all really interesting.”

“Had you?”

“No,” she whispers, and buries her head in her hands. “I went riding instead.”

“Let me get this straight.” I put my tambourine down on the bar, because you can’t think properly with a tambourine in your hand. “Tarkie thought he was giving you a coded message that you would understand due to your shared love of the family trees.”

“Yes.”

“But you haven’t the foggiest what he meant.”

“No.”

Honestly. This is the trouble with living in a stately home with great poetic symbols everywhere. If they lived in a normal house with one apple tree and a privet hedge, there’d be none of this hoo-ha.

“OK,” I say firmly. “Suze, you need to find out which tree Owl’s Tower is. Phone your parents, phone his parents, phone your head groundsman—anyone!”

“I already have,” admits Suze. “I’ve left them all messages.”

“So what do we do now?”

“I don’t know. Wait.”

I can’t quite believe this. Basically Suze’s marriage is either over or not, depending on a tree. This is so bloody Tarquin.

Although I suppose it could have been worse. It could have been the plot of a Wagner opera.

Suze gets down from her barstool and starts pacing round on the spot, nibbling her fingers and checking her phone about every two seconds. Her eyes are wild and she’s muttering to herself, “Is it the chestnut? Maybe it’s that big ash.” She’s going to drive herself insane like this.

“Look, Suze.” I try to grab her arm, but miss. “Calm down. There’s nothing you can do now. You need to think of something else. Let’s go and look at the fair. Suze, please,” I beg, making another swipe at her arm. “You’ve had a really stressful time. It’s not good for you. It’s all cortisol and stuff in your veins. It’s poison!”

I learned this at Golden Peace. In fact, I went to a whole series of classes called Limit Your Stress Levels, which would have been really useful if I hadn’t always arrived late after yoga and spent the whole class feeling totally hassled. (I actually think I’d have felt less stressed if I hadn’t gone to the class.)

“OK,” says Suze at last, still pacing. “OK. Maybe I should try to get my mind off things.”

“Exactly! Look, we’ve got ages till we’re on duty in the ceramics tent. Let’s go and find a distraction.”

“Right.” Suze stops pacing, but her eyes are still wild. “You’re right. What shall we do? I wonder if I can borrow a horse. I could enter some events. I’ve never done a rodeo before.”

A rodeo? Is she nuts?

“Er…maybe!” I say warily. “I was actually thinking more like wander round? Look at the displays? They’ve got chickens, you know.”

Suze has always had a soft spot for chickens (which I understand even less than the pig thing). I unfold my guide and I’m about to tell her some of the breeds, when her eyes light up.

“I know.” She clasps hold of my arm and marches me off. “I’ve got it.”

“Where are we going?” I protest.

“You’ll see.”

—

Suze seems so determined, there’s no point arguing. And at least she’s stopped nibbling her fingers like a madwoman. We skirt round all the food tents, wind our way through the livestock arenas, and pass the Creative Village. (We pass it twice, in fact. I think Suze gets a bit lost, not that she’ll admit it.)

“Here we are.” Suze draws up at last in front of a tent with a sign reading HEEL TO TOE. I can hear “Sweet Home Alabama” being played on the sound system inside.

“What’s this?” I say blankly.

“We’re buying boots,” says Suze. “We’re at a proper county fair, so we need proper cowboy boots.” She sweeps me inside the tent and I inhale a solid smell of leather. In fact, I’m so overcome by the smell, it takes me a moment to register the spectacular sight before me.

“Oh my God,” I stutter at last.

“Isn’t it just…” Suze seems as overwhelmed as I am.

We’re standing arm in arm, staring upward in total awe like a pair of pilgrims at the holy shrine.

I mean, I’ve seen cowboy boots for sale, plenty of times. You know. A shelf here and there. But I’ve never seen anything like this. The racks reach the top of the tent. Each rack has about fifteen shelves, and each one is covered in boots. There are brown boots and black boots, pink ones and aquamarine ones. Some have rhinestones. Some have embroidery. Some have rhinestones and embroidery. Under a sign reading LUXURY BOOTS, there’s a white pair with inlaid python print, which cost five hundred dollars, and a pair made from pale-blue ostrich leather, which cost seven hundred. There’s even a black pair which are thigh high and marked Latest Fashion but they look a bit weird, to be honest.