Dear Kate. She was so overwhelmed by it all. So impressed. Her family were restrained and colourless. She was always wide-eyed and in love with us, her round face pink at a word from Daddy. He charmed her as if with a magic pipe and she lay squirming at his feet. She was so sweet. Of course she was plump and she had to wear those dreadful glasses, but she was a darling behind all that gruff self-protectiveness. Win Munro never gave her an ounce of self-esteem. She had no idea how to say anything warm or caressing. It was my parents who did that for her. And Daddy was so fond of Kate back then, giving attention in a way that he never normally did to women who weren’t beautiful. But you couldn’t not like Kate. She was full of innocence and fortitude. She’d go to the ends of the earth for you in her tight cotton frocks and buckled sandals.

‘Gosh, Livy, it’s beautiful!’ she cried, looking round the garden with her mouth open. The wisteria was hanging in flower and there were garlands of lilies round the entrance to the marquee. The servants were on the run, Dawson and O’Callaghan heaving a huge side of cooked meat on a platter.

‘My feet are killing me already,’ O’Callaghan moaned. I hadn’t got the measure of O’Callaghan yet, she was a new one. The maids were always coming and going. Except Dawson. Dawson was a very sensible woman. She’d learned: she lived out and had a small child and no husband. She hung on to her job with us.

It was already nearly dusk when the guests arrived. Lanterns glowed between the leaves in the garden. Mummy had dressed me in a white bridal frock like Betty McNamee wore for her First Communion. Kate’s dress was pale green and as frumpy as ever, poor thing, but I could never lend her one of mine because she couldn’t fit into them.

‘It’s gorgeous, Livy,’ she said wistfully to me. She wasn’t jealous. That wasn’t Kate. She just admired. Her heart was so whole. She didn’t see bad things and I didn’t want to make her. I needed her to believe in us, in our fairy tale, so we could have her wonder, her adoration.

We stayed at the edge of the crowd, darting to the table to fill our plates. Kate ate, I picked at the food, the meats and sweet tomatoes and eggs and prawns trapped in aspic. I gave my most angelic smiles to those who stopped me and spoke.

‘You’re not eating much,’ Katie said, as we sat in our spot near the shrubbery and watched.

I was sick with nerves. ‘Oh, I’ve seen the food going past under my nose all day,’ I said. ‘Dawson and O’Callaghan gave me some bits to eat. I’ve no space left.’

We gazed up at the shadowy figures around us, the men in their dark suits and the shimmering, coloured silks of the ladies’ long dresses which swished across the grass as they walked. I pointed to a tall, lean man talking earnestly near us. ‘Neville Chamberlain,’ I told Kate. ‘Look, there’s his wife over there.’