Last evenings woodland investigation had yielded no result and conversation at dinner was taken up with the prospect of a healthier bank balance versus an ever more absent husband. Marriage to a high flyer was always going to be this way. Though Glen, in truth, was a reluctant one. His problem was that he was good at his job. Thorough, diligent and an asset to Sir Walter Marland, Chairman of Brax Scientific, an investment firm specialising in science business technology. Honest, decent and steady, quite apart from his dark James Bond like, good looks.

They had met at a wedding. The young Lisa Goodman was a dark, tousled-haired bridesmaid. Newly qualified as a teacher, she had taken her first job away from home and found herself sharing a train journey with Glen, coincidentally attending the same wedding as best man to a childhood friend. For Lisa life’s course couldn’t have run smoother.

Her children had beaten her downstairs and had switched on the TV. Seven year old Nathan beating Five year old Maddy to the remote. Morning cartoons blended with the swish of the curtain. Normality in the room but questions and anxiety in her mind. Wasn’t this how housewives became neurotic? She thought. She clicked her tongue and sent herself an internal memo to keep a grip on her sanity.

“The trouble with picnics is wasps and flies”, Glen mumbled, clearly eyeing a distant pub.

She may have romanticised the idea of the kind of picnics seen on butter commercials but she remained undeterred. “You men are all the same. Happy to charge around a football field getting covered in mud but you treat grass at a picnic like its an alien surface.”

“I can’t remember ever eating while playing football, unless you count a jam-butty I had when I was eight! I’m sure Ray Greenslade kicked the ball at it on purpose.”

“Aww! Did you cry?” She mocked gently then gave a glance behind herself.

“Certainly not!” He retorted with false indignation. “I just beat him up instead!”

“No you didn’t!”

“No I didn’t. I always wanted to though.”

“What stopped you?”

“He was bigger than me.”

They walked on through the whispering trees, the children ahead of them. Somewhere in a recess of her mind there were five sets of footsteps not four. And somewhere in her mind she would have to find the courage to fight her rising demons.