‘Is that a… dolphin?’ Julia asked, if anything so Nina didn’t notice Alice, who was fanning her face with a rolled-up hand towel, overcome. She shot her a quizzical look over Nina’s shoulder: what? But all Alice could do was shake her head and gulp. She shouldn’t be surprised, she’d assumed all debutantes would be affected. Mind you, even Julia could see that Nina didn’t appear to be your usual deb.

‘Where are you from?’ she asked.

‘East London. Mile End,’ Nina replied, her voice rising at the end as though she wasn’t sure it was the right answer. ‘My mum’s Irish though…’ She trailed off, distracted. ‘I got it first, you know,’ she added, an edge of irritation to her voice as though this was something she’d said many times. ‘Before Mark Owen,’ she added, to Julia’s blank look. ‘The dolphin tattoo.’ Julia was totally flummoxed.

‘I didn’t have you down as a Take That fan,’ Alice said in a small, squeaky voice as though she was struggling to contain herself.

Nina slid on to the floor, tucking her legs beneath her. Julia shot her another look and asked if she was okay.

‘I stopped telling people my dad was a film star when I was ten. Even then, I could tell people thought I was mad… I assumed it was a family rumour that had been blown out of proportion. Like, my dad was really a blue coat at Butlins or something. But it turns out it’s true.’ Julia fell silent, and Nina couldn’t tell if she was sympathising with her or judging her for not appreciating her luck. She’d called her cousin, Erin, earlier, to tell her how awful everything was, but all Erin could say was ‘it sounds so cool!’ And it wasn’t, it really wasn’t. For years she and Erin had speculated on her paternity. Gorged on snippets gathered via her Aunty Niamh. Could it be real? That Joanie had a brief fling with a fledgling movie star? That he scarpered as soon as she told him she was pregnant? But the older Nina grew, the odder it seemed, and it started to make her feel strange when she thought of it; light-headed and unsettled. As though there was a tiny dark spot in her chest, a pinprick, widening into a gap, and if she thought about it too much she had the dizzying sensation that the dark hole might get bigger and bigger until it was all that was left of her, so she stopped talking about it and put it to the back of her mind. She kept busy: baking with Niamh, playing her guitar, drinking in the park with Erin, because as long as the balance was right, and the dark hole was satisfied, and her brain was left with no time to consider the alternative, things felt good. And then one day the invitation came.

*

Alice recovered herself as the silence stretched between them, the mood downbeat as Alice and Julia joined Nina on the floor. ‘So you’re Nina Laurent,’ she said. She shook her head gently. She was beautiful and cool and her father was Samir Laurent. This was so typical of Teddy. But she couldn’t stay cross, because there was such a fragility to Nina. If you had told Alice she was about to meet a movie star’s beautiful French debutante daughter, she would never have pictured the girl standing before her. She seemed normal, aside from the haute couture custard dress.