‘Well, I suppose we may as well eat now we’re here,’ she said petulantly. Lord, she was bad-mannered. What did Michael see in her? She was gorgeous, of course; sleek and shiny and with long silky hair, too long, possibly, for late forties, and she’d had some work, I decided, looking at her very smooth brow. Not that a man would probably notice. It was subtly done, and she’d sensibly avoided her lips. We ordered a salad apiece. Then we moved to a little table in the corner, and as we chatted about how nice the Taylors were, she became a bit more genial. After the salads arrived, I glanced surreptitiously at my phone, which wasn’t actually allowed in here.

‘Oh.’ I pocketed it quickly. ‘Sonia’s definitely not going to make lunch,’ I explained, ‘but she’s going to try to join us for a coffee later. Now. Tell me all about it. The book! It sounds amazing. Do you have any pictures?’

She brightened and pulled out a tablet, then hid it quickly under the table as the barman frowned. I swivelled around to take a closer look. Shot after shot of typical Scandi room sets whirred past, all blond wood and bleached floors but with a twist, she told me, in case I hadn’t spotted it, in that the walls were flocked velvet, suede sometimes, and the upholstery too, making the juxtaposition all the more vivid. And all the more alarming, I thought privately, as I oohed and aahed, gushing extravagantly, thinking – only rich industrialists, surely? But Ingrid was encouraged by my laying it on thick and began to thaw a little. She even managed to smile when, on learning she’d taken the pictures herself, I declared she could be a photographer, too.

‘D’you think? Well, you’re very kind. You must come and see it, if you really like it. My shop, I mean. It’s in Chelsea Green.’ Of course it was.

‘I’d love to,’ I enthused. ‘I’m hopeless at interior design. I could really do with some good ideas. Did you study it for years?’

Clever Lucy, clever. She hadn’t, of course; she was self-taught, and had been set up in a jiffy either by Daddy or her husband, but loved that I thought she was a professional and not just a rich housewife filling her days. So off we went again on her ‘instinctive eye’ and ‘unfailing feel for colour’, so that before long I knew exactly what she and Michael had in common: themselves. And actually, I was disappointed. Usually they were nicer than this. I began to have a slight sinking feeling. Conscience, my trump card, was not feeling so strong.

‘Will you open another shop?’ I asked eagerly, as if I simply couldn’t wait and hoped it was next door. ‘You know, expand?’