‘Fortune cookies!’ Helena cried at the end of the meal, holding up a plate as if it was some kind of oracle. Maggie didn’t have any truck with that sort of nonsense – a load of superstitious rubbish, she thought privately – but gamely took a cookie when the plate came her way. When they broke them open, it seemed as if everyone else had rather oblique fortunes: You will find light amidst darkness was Amelia’s, for instance, which could have meant anything (‘Turn your bedroom lamp on tonight,’ Maggie joked at the time); and Helena’s said Life moves like a serpent, which she seemed to be interpreting in a smutty way (‘Hear that, Ross? Snake-hips are go!’)

Then someone said, ‘Go on then, Maggie, what’s yours?’

Maggie opened the piece of paper and read aloud, ‘True passion awaits’, only to be greeted by a gale of laughter. Honestly – a gale. ‘Yeah, right!’ Helena had shrieked. ‘Well, they got that wrong, didn’t they? Ha-ha!’

‘True passion – brilliant,’ Ross had chuckled, as if it was the most hilariously unlikely thing he’d ever heard.

Maggie had turned hot all over and she’d crumpled the paper in her fist. Was that how everyone saw her – as a passionless old spinster? A dried-up old stick? Was that how Amelia saw her too? she wondered miserably now, gazing out at her perfect surroundings and feeling nothing but dismay. Poor old Maggie, the laughing stock of the family. No wonder Amelia had been so keen to escape with some new mates.

A bird was flying high overhead, gliding on a thermal; she watched it soar away into the blue. The night of the fortune-cookie debacle she had felt so alone in the world. Her mum, at least, seemed to have noticed her humiliation and spoke to her about it later on, as the two of them stacked the dishwasher (Maggie and her mum always seemed to end up doing this in Ross’s house, as if they were the natural skivvies of the pecking order). ‘Come on, they were only having a bit of a fun, don’t take it so personally,’ she soothed.

Maggie had felt like a small child again, needing comfort from a sympathetic parent after having been teased. She was an adult, she should be able to let these things glide off her, but they always snagged on her prickles. Besides, it hurt to have been laughed at like that. ‘Is it so outlandish, though, that I might fall in love?’ she asked quietly. ‘Am I such a figure of ridicule that it’s an impossible thought?’

‘No! Of course not. They were only joking,’ her mum said, scraping slithery chow-mein noodles into the compost bin. ‘Everyone’s been teasing Ross all night about his so-called advanced age, haven’t they, but he laughs along with it. Water off a duck’s back!’