I dimly remember that Newton’s third law of motion is something to do with equal and opposite forces. I’d have to check with Alice Aldridge and her engineering degree to get this right, but as applied to her own situation, I’d say that this broadly translates as: if things seem to be going pretty well, it’s only a matter of time before the gods of Ambridge retaliate with equal and opposite disaster. Just when she was six months sober and coping nicely with baby Martha, her ex, Chris, and her best friend, Amy, had a one-night stand – heralded by the immortal morning-after line, “Can you pass my bra?” When Alice finds out, she’ll relapse, mark my words, and the divorce will get ugly, and it’ll go to court, and Chris will get a massive chunk of Home Farm, and the Fall of the House of Aldridge will be complete.
Oh Alice. You should leave Ambridge. Still, one should be careful what one wishes for. Phoebe’s off, having got herself a job in the Highlands, something to do with microalgae. Perhaps she could go and visit the terrifying institution in which her great-grandfather Jack Archer drank himself to death back in the 1970s.
