‘No. I suppose, after what happened …’ Her voice trails off. She’s on shaky ground here. Looking towards the men standing nearby, she imagines she sees a stiffening in Greg’s features, a thoughtful seriousness entering his pose. She wonders whether he’s heard what Maria said.

‘No, it wasn’t that,’ Maria continues. ‘Even before what happened to Charlotte, Will was dead set against him. It was because of what happened between Anton and me.’

Hilary feels the words coming at her as a sort of physical shock. She blinks and stares at Maria, whose manner has grown conspiratorial, gossipy.

‘He rang me one morning – this is years ago, back when Jason and Sadie were still in kindergarten. Rang me up out of the blue and asked me if I’d meet him that day for lunch. Such an odd request. I mean, I knew him socially, of course – Jason and Mark were pals, in and out of each other’s houses – and I’d chatted to Anton at Christmas drinks or the tennis-club social, same as I chat to everyone. But, still, it was weird when he rang me. And he sounded so serious. “Is everything all right?” I asked him, thinking that something had happened to him, or to Charlotte, and he told me it was delicate and that he couldn’t discuss it over the phone. Well! I arranged to meet him, hurried down to the Royal Marine that lunchtime, expecting to find him all ashen-faced with news that Charlotte was leaving him, or he’d been given some horrible diagnosis, or that he’d gone bankrupt, something like that. But when I got there, he was all smiles, wine already ordered, not a care in the world. I’m there expecting to hear some sob story, and instead he starts spouting all this nonsense about Greek goddesses and mythological queens!’

Hilary’s heart goes cold. The glass in her hand feels heavy. She looks at Maria, taking her in properly – the wide blue eyes, the ski-jump nose. She’s blonde and pretty in an obvious way. ‘Pert’ is the word that comes to Hilary – pert and chatty. She will not stop talking.

‘Eventually, I said to him: “Anton, what is this about?” And that was when he put his hand on mine and told me he was mad about me, that he had been for ages, and then he suggested we go somewhere private to explore things further – those were the words he used! Well! You can imagine how shocked I was, Hilary. Getting propositioned like that in broad daylight! When I told Will he hit the roof, of course. It was all I could do to stop him going around there and punching Anton in the face!’

Maria gives her little tinkly laugh, and Hilary can see her delight in telling this story, unaware of the effect it’s having.