‘The British soldiers held a dance in the camp,’ Dinah continues. ‘It didn’t matter that during the clean-up, the officers, the Eton chaps, had cleaned the excrement in our stinking huts – those same soldiers put their gentle arms around our skinny bones and we rested our shaved heads against their sweet, boyish shoulders, and oh! It was wonderful, such courtesy. This inmate, Moses, he asked me to dance and we were skin and bone and angles, but I was a girl again and he was a boy.’ Her voice tightens as if it’s being squeezed. ‘So now, Fern, I’m asking you. What did those lipsticks do? Did they transform us? Did they change the way we looked?’

‘No,’ I whisper, shaking my head but understanding her, and it’s a revelation, a justification, a flash of comprehension. ‘But they changed the way you felt.’

‘Exactly so.’ Her smile is kind. ‘And is that trivial?’

I shake my head. ‘No.’

‘So there. That’s how it was. And now you know.’ She nods and gets to her feet, then bends over her husband. His head dents the pillows and she puts her hands either side of his face and holds him lovingly. ‘That’s how I met this boy of mine, my Moses.’ She kisses him on the mouth.

It seems unbearably poignant and I’m about to look away, when I see Moss has opened his eyes a little, enough to let the light shine out.

‘My bride,’ he says hoarsely, and his words are muffled against her mouth.

Dinah straightens up. ‘I kissed you awake!’ She looks at us in astonishment. It’s incredible, miraculous!

David gets to his feet, trying to compose himself.

Dinah gets onto the bed and rests her head on her husband’s chest, and she looks so relieved, and so beautiful in her wedding gown.

I glance at David and he nods back at me, and we leave them be.

KIM

Computers are miraculous things. The World Wide Web means I have the world at my fingertips. I’m rushing along in the full flow of information, working through Fern’s book and sending emails to her clients, and I’m enjoying the replies that I get back. I get one from a woman who went to a wedding and came home with a boyfriend; a girl who went to a school prom and made up with her estranged mother; a young woman with sight problems who’s up for promotion – all sorts of lovely tales. And they all have their ideas for the thank-you party – most vociferously, Betty and Mercia, who fancy themselves as models.

‘After all, Daphne Selfe’s a model, and she’s older than we are,’ Betty tells me.

‘If you’re wearing Fern’s clothes for the party, I suppose you will be modelling them,’ I reason.

We’re helping Cato to roll up Betty’s kilims.