‘To the millimetre.’ John, in his dark, pressed suit and white shirt, reminded me too much of his father and I reached again for the champagne. ‘How did he get in touch with you?’

Harry looked surprised. ‘John and I have written to each other for years. It started when he went to school — he wrote to me at Tommy’s.’

‘What?’

‘He wrote to me because he was afraid he wasn’t going to be big enough.’ ‘

‘Big enough?’

‘Yes,’ Harry laughed. ‘What he meant was he didn’t think he’d be enough. It was about something I wrote to him once.’

I remembered the letter Harry gave John when he left the hospital: Make sure you’re big enough a man to fill your body. ‘So we kept in touch. He didn’t tell you?’

‘No. But that’s fine.’

When the meal was over and we were standing on the pavement outside, Sonja kissed Harry as if she meant it and John nearly broke Harry’s ribs with a bear-hug, before turning to me. Then they disappeared in a taxi to their hotel, to leave the next day for a week’s honeymoon in Paris - my wedding present. Harry, Ellen and I looked at each other.

‘That’s it, then,’ I said, desolate. Twenty years seemed to have passed without my noticing. ‘John’s married.’ I wanted to claw the day back, begin again. I wanted to claw back so much time and spend it all differently.

‘Joan, I have to go in an hour or so. Why don’t we have another drink somewhere?’ Harry asked.

I nodded, aware of the ridiculously inappropriate hat I held in my hand, like a Christmas bauble in the summer sun. We walked in silence down the King’s Road, dodging the crowds. The last time I was on that road I was driving a Morris Minor, looking for the turning into Sydney Street leading eventually to the car park on Gloucester Road. We kept walking because I needed to and after half an hour found ourselves outside the Anglesea Arms in South Kensington, with the tables outside still in sunlight. Harry fetched the drinks, came back out and sat next to me.

‘How are you, Joan?’

I grimaced. Harry was the one person I could think of, other than Ellen, with whom I could be honest. I thought of the silver compact in my bag. Should I tell Harry that I still couldn’t quite see the beauty he had written of? Ellen excused herself and went to the bathroom. ‘Up and down.’

‘It’s been a long time — nearly seven years. It is good to see you — I’ve often thought of you and John and wondered how you were getting on.’

‘We survived.’

‘Ah, come on, Joan, you did more than that.’ Harry took my hand again and this time he didn’t let it go. ‘Be gende with yourself. You did more than survive or manage or get by. I know that because of what John’s written to me over the years. You were the best mother he could have had.’