The St Agnes’s girls’ dinner. Their annual reunion. Although none of them are girls any more, their ages ranging across the upper forties. While, next to her, the waiter fiddles with the cork, Hilary allows her gaze to pass around the table, and tries to see in their middle-aged faces the young women she had first met when the four of them had joined the staff of St Agnes’s, the new recruits banding together, a friendship forged between them that has lasted more than twenty years. Only Hilary and Evelyn remain at the school, but these annual summer dinners when the school term finally ends have endured and held them together.

It could be argued that some of them have improved with age. Claire and Anna are better-dressed, more polished versions of their younger selves. Anna, in particular, is unlined and blemish-free, skin stretched taut over prominent cheekbones, a wide-eyed unblinking look. Of them all, Evelyn looks closest to her age. After a battle with breast cancer three years ago, she had stopped dyeing her hair, given up wearing make-up and drinking alcohol, and embraced veganism. Hilary has always felt closest to Evelyn. When the others had left the school, Anna to take up a different position, Claire to stay at home with her children, Hilary and Evelyn had stuck together, sharing their hopes and their discontents. Hilary can feel Evelyn watching her carefully across the table, raising her eyebrows a fraction to check that she is okay. She’ll have clocked the speed at which Hilary is drinking, and Evelyn, for all her quiet rectitude, is observant of these signs.

Hilary shoots back a warm, bracing smile, straightens, gives her hair a little shake. The wine is threading through her veins. I can cope with this, she thinks, applying her attention once more to the conversation. I can cope with their chatter about hormones and discos, about hockey matches and gym gear, the financial drain of after-school activities and summer camps. I can cope.

‘How is Greg?’ Evelyn asks, shifting the conversation with a view to drawing her friend back into it.

‘He’s good. Working hard.’

‘When’s the new book out, Hil?’ Anna asks, and Hilary tells them August, realizing with a jolt that there’s only a few short weeks left.

‘Oh, how exciting!’ Anna remarks. Claire tells her that she’ll add it to her list of holiday reads, and the others agree.

Hilary appreciates their enthusiasm, feels buoyed by their friendship, and for the rest of the main course, she fields their questions about the book, about Greg’s writing life, about whether he will quit his teaching post and turn to writing full time.