Stuck in the archway from Gilbeys Yard is Dinah, wearing an ivory wedding dress, looking like one of those touchy, snobby old ladies that you see in Claridge’s, holding their chins high to smooth out their necks. Also, slightly crazy. I wonder with great trepidation whether recent events have tipped her over the edge.

I run over to help her. ‘Dinah, what are you doing?’

‘The way people stare,’ she says indignantly, ‘you’d think they’d never seen a wedding dress before. So let them, it’s a free country last time I looked.’ She adds, with some satisfaction, ‘I took up a whole seat on the bus for myself. Fern, where’s my chair?’

I fetch her a chair and she sits happily in the front of the shop in her frothy nest of silk. Who doesn’t like an audience?

‘This is the dress that Moss made for me to be married in. It’s based on Norman Hartnell’s design of Princess Elizabeth’s wedding dress. You recognise the sweetheart neck and the long sleeves, of course.’

‘Absolutely,’ we agree.

‘It’s made from parachute silk,’ she tells us. ‘I’m thinking, this dress has brought me seventy years of happiness and Moss made it with his own hands.’

I can see where she’s going with this, her rationale. ‘So you’re going to forget about the Chanels?’

‘Bof! I can’t forget,’ she says irritably, frowning at me. ‘Wouldn’t that be convenient? But I am choosing to forgive him. My choice.’

For a moment it doesn’t seem as if she’s sitting down and we’re standing around her.

It’s more as if she’s way above us and we’re sitting at her feet, because none of us says anything at all, it’s that simple and that profound.

David seems miles away.

‘Yeah,’ Alexa says at last, breaking the silence. ‘Like you said. Your choice.’

‘You,’ Dinah says, pointing at David, ‘and you,’ pointing at me, ‘are coming with me to the hospital after work.’ She spreads her hands, encompassing Jenna and Alexa. ‘I don’t know you, but you look like decent people and if you want to come with us to visit an old man, a stranger, I won’t stop you.’

After we close, David, Dinah and I get the number twenty-four bus to the hospital, Dinah causing a stir in her wedding gown, and we go to see Moss. This journey has become familiar; we go up the steps, into the lobby, queueing for a lift and watching the floor numbers change with everyone else.

Moss is asleep when we get there. He’s not attached to the drip.

‘You know how he is,’ Dinah says. ‘No change. Always asleep.’ She drags her chair nearer to him. ‘Moss, it’s me, your bride.’

The green sheet is rising and falling slowly with his breathing.