Mercia’s licking her finger and pressing it on the cake crumbs on her plate. ‘She asked me, too.’ She looks up at me and laughs. ‘You know what Bertie was like. I’ve got more pictures of Bertie in a dress than I have of myself.’

‘Really?’ This is news to me.

‘Crossing the equator, Bertie always threw himself wholeheartedly into the fancy-dress ceremony. On his last cruise, his very last, he did a wonderful Lily Savage in a gold sequined gown and a blond wig – he made a marvellous drag queen. All the British men dressed up as women and had a whale of a time. Only the British men, now I think of it. The Americans went as Uncle Sam or Superman. And the Europeans ignored it altogether.’

How unlike Enid to ask her friends such an intimate question.

She’d allowed me to keep my secrets without judging or prying or disapproving, or at least, without showing it, which amounts to the same; Enid was never usually slow to show her disapproval.

‘I sort of guessed it was something to do with you, but she didn’t go into it,’ Mercia said.

That’s a tender side of Enid, an understanding side of her that I didn’t foresee. I suppose what I’ve learnt is that you can’t second-guess people. Even with a fuzzy head, it strikes me as being vitally important that I remember it.

LOT 19

Turquoise A-line mini dress, Biba, 1960s, medium, with beaded neckline, high set short sleeves.

It’s a cloudy day and I’m dressing naked Dolly in a turquoise Biba dress with a beaded neckline and cutaway shoulders, humming with pleasure at the texture of the silk. A woman with her hair pulled fiercely into a red rubber band is looking at my daffodil-yellow Chloe maxidress with a distant, slack-muscled look of misery and I hope it might be something she loves, something that’ll raise her spirits.

A busker is playing Simon and Garfunkel and it’s merging with the reggae on the music stall. The smell of onions blows on the breeze.

David’s talking to a bearded man about the constellation of Aries; they’re debating the compatibility of Aries with Pisces. Pisces and Aries can get on as long as there’s room for compromise, according to David.

If you ask me, that applies to all relationships. I still haven’t been able to work out what David thinks about the whole astrology business, especially now his astrologically perfect Gigi has dumped him.