“Very funny. Come on, K, let’s leave Lindsay and Meredith to talk down here. I need the biggest gin in the Home Counties and someone to wash my back while I slag off that scheming cow Stella and gutless Guy the porn king.”

“Porn king?” Kirsten said faintly.

“I’ll tell you all about it,” Helen promised, sliding a bottle of eighteen-year-old Macallan towards Lindsay and half-filling a tumbler with gin. She tossed in a couple of lumps of ice, a slice of lemon and a token splash of tonic, then shooed Kirsten out of the door.

“That is one helluva woman,” Meredith said.

Pouring herself a good two fingers of the golden liquid, Lindsay nodded. “Sophie’s ex. You see what I have to live up to? Ebullient. Irrepressible. Generous to a fault. And right now, possessed of a rage that would make the Eumenides look a teeny bit cross.” She took a bottle of still mineral water from the fridge and carefully added about the same again to her glass. Then she swirled the liquid round, watching the sobs of spirit subside down the glass. “How have you been?” she asked, settling down at the table, taking in Meredith’s improved appearance. She looked as if she’d had a decent night’s sleep, and her hair was washed and pulled back in a loose pigtail.

Meredith shrugged. “Up and down. I can go for whole chunks of time on automatic pilot, getting through the day. Then it comes at me out of left field, no warning. It’s like I hear her voice, or I half see her out of the corner of my eye. I get a whiff of her perfume. Or some memory ambushes me. I went to the local bakery today to buy some bread, and the baker was coming through with a tray of freshly baked cinnamon Danish and I just burst into tears. Penny loved his Danish, she’d send me down there every morning to pick some up for breakfast whenever we were in London together. I felt so stupid. I mean, how can you get emotional about a tray of Danish?” Even the recollection was enough to make Meredith’s voice tremble and her eyes grow damp.

Lindsay swished a mouthful of Scotch round her mouth, making her taste-buds snap into wakefulness and her gums tingle. She swallowed and said, “The last thing Frances ever gave me was a jar of quails’ eggs. I still have them, lurking at the back of the fridge. The oldest quails’ eggs in the world. It’s not rational, but if Sophie ever threw them away I’d probably take a kitchen knife to her, and she knows it. We’re a good pair, you and me. I have a sentimental attachment to quails’ eggs and you cry at Danish pastries. We’d better not have a day out in Harrods food hall, eh?”