‘Of course! But the whole wedding business – Gigi’s going to want to plan that herself. She’ll probably want it in a cathedral, with choirs and bishops and bridesmaids all matching and looking gorgeous. It’s not something she’ll want you to surprise her with in Camden Town Hall. She’ll want to plan it herself. Planning a wedding is the fun part! I’m telling you this as a friend.’ I say it hand on heart, without an iota of self-interest.

He frowns and chews his lower lip while he ponders my good advice and I watch him hungrily, wishing I were the one chewing it.

‘A cathedral?’ he says at last. ‘Really? It all sounds a bit conventional, for Gigi.’

‘What do you think an engagement is?’ I point out in my role as ‘good old Fern’. ‘She wanted a ring so give her a ring, not a wedding.’

‘A ring,’ he says. ‘What kind?’

‘One with a diamond,’ I say wearily. ‘And take her with you to choose it.’

His face breaks into a smile and Lucy’s right, when he smiles he shows just the perfect amount of teeth.

‘Thanks, Fern.’

‘Ah,’ I say, flapping my hand as if it’s cost me no heartache at all, ‘you’re totally welcome. What are friends for?’

KIM

Dinah’s turban is a delight to wear because catching sight of myself in the mirror, the blackness of it reminds me of the thick, dark hair I had when I was young, before age faded me and it started to turn to grey in my forties, silver in my fifties and white in my eighties. Wearing it, I see myself with new eyes, as someone rather dashing.

Sitting together in Cotton’s Rhum Shack with Dinah and Fern, the turban didn’t so much as raise an eyebrow – and there were plenty of eyebrows that could have been raised because the place was packed. That acceptance is what’s given me the confidence to wear it to Kentish Town.

I’m making my way to Poundstretcher for essentials, when I realise it’s stopped raining and I fold my umbrella up, feeling joyously young and debonair.

A couple of bulky old ladies are coming out of Better Specs, wearing matching pale blue anoraks and carrying Iceland bags, engrossed in an energetic conversation.

‘Would you look at him!’ one of them says, her expression as avid as if she’s watching a minor car crash. ‘Doesn’t he look an eejit!’

‘Oh, he does all right.’

I feel a moment’s sympathy for the subject of their scorn.

‘You have to ask yourself, if you have to wear a hat, what’s wrong with a flat cap?’

It dawns on me then that I, myself, am the subject of their conversation.

They’re big women, standing in my path, blocking my way, and I clutch my umbrella with a terrible feeling of being caught out, exposed.