‘Exactly.’ Becky turned to face her, relieved that at least someone seemed to understand her concerns. ‘That’s what worries me. You need time to get to know a person. Also, my brother hasn’t dated anyone seriously since his last girlfriend walked out. That was six years ago, and they’d been together for eight years. Since medical school. It left him a bit broken. We’ve all been worried about him. Mum, most of all, obviously, because she worries all the time even when we’re fine. For years he has dated no one, and then suddenly he went on a business trip and he met this girl and now, two months later, he has an announcement to make. Tomorrow night. He has ordered champagne. I’m assuming it’s a sign.’

‘Sounds like it. Same thing happened to my cousin Martha,’ the man standing behind her in the queue took a step forward. ‘We’d all given up on her meeting someone, hadn’t we Ginny?’

Bored with queuing, the woman he’d addressed the question to hauled her case forward so that she could join in the conversation. ‘We had. Her boyfriend refused to propose, said they were fine as they were and didn’t want to get married, but then a new receptionist started at his work and a month later he left Martha and was getting married. Turns out it wasn’t that he didn’t want to get married, but he didn’t want to marry Martha. He said it wasn’t personal, but how much more personal can you get?’ She exchanged looks with her husband.

‘Heartbreaking,’ he said. ‘We thought Martha would be single forever after that, but three years later she was walking the dog and that was it.’

‘That was what?’ Becky was struggling to keep up. People were so complicated. They made her head hurt, which was why generally she preferred to work with computers.

‘She met Roland. A month later they were married.’

‘Oh.’ Maybe that was reassuring. ‘A month is fast. And they’re happy together?’

‘No. They’re divorced too.’

So not reassuring at all.

She was beginning to wish she hadn’t started this conversation because it was doing nothing to soothe her anxiety about her brother. ‘So you’re saying it’s best to take your time over falling in love.’

‘Maybe, but you don’t always have a choice.’ Ginny leaned closer. ‘Sometimes you can be going along living your life, minding your own business and then wham.’

‘Wham? As in you walk into something and fall over?’

‘No, wham as in you fall in love. Love at first sight. And you can’t help it.’