The red sleeves are full and floaty against the black satin and it doesn’t look at all like the sort of dress that the mother of the bride would wear to a wedding breakfast (unless she was still wearing it from the night before).

Dinah has turned up mid-conversation, apparently having heard enough to get her interested. ‘Wear it with a red hat,’ Dinah says, ‘a big one.’

‘Bethan, this is Dinah, my assistant. Dinah, this is Bethan, a good client of mine.’

Dinah pouts at me, probably because I’ve called her my assistant.

‘A red hat?’ Bethan asks Dinah. ‘How about a fascinator?’

Dinah lets out a little shriek. ‘Not a fascinator; never a fascinator – it’s an apology of a hat. You want a statement hat and red lipstick. Not that pink you’re wearing now, which is pointless because you can barely see it. Red. Make sure you leave it on some collars.’

Bethan laughs a real good belly laugh and goes behind the makeshift curtain while Dinah and I wait outside, breathless with anticipation.

Dinah’s clasping her hands together. ‘And black shoes, not those flesh ones, yuk!’ She covers her eyes theatrically. ‘Fern, you have some hats in your house?’

‘No, I don’t sell hats.’

‘What can I tell you, we should get hats,’ Dinah murmurs under her breath as if it’s long been a bone of contention between us.

‘Women don’t wear hats to weddings anymore.’

Dinah looks askance. ‘What weddings do you go to, that they have no hats?’

Just then, Bethan comes out from behind the screen, putting an end to our bickering.

Knees together, a quick wiggle, turning her back to us. ‘Could you zip me up, please?’

Dinah gets there first and Bethan turns around then strikes a pose for us. It’s then that I know so certainly it’s the dress for her that tears spring to my eyes. It fits her like a dream. ‘Perfect!’

Dinah isn’t so easily pleased. She turns Bethan around, looking at her critically from close to and then stepping back across the alley, all the way to the wall of Stables Market, where she makes binoculars of her two hands before coming close again to smooth the silk over Bethan’s hips.

Honestly, I’ve never seen such a performance in all my life.

‘Perfection,’ Dinah declares at last, opening up her arms to catch imaginary bouquets from the heavens.

She’s incorrigible.

‘David, let’s have a man’s opinion.’

David gets to his feet, turns his clear, intimate gaze on Bethan and raises his dark eyebrows.

It doesn’t sound much, compared with Dinah’s extravagant display of admiration, but Bethan blushes and clutches her throat.

How does he do that?