And she looks so beautiful—has obviously made an effort—in that gorgeous dress, the way her hair frames her face, her face which is flushed from the outside air and the alcohol. And she is so touched that Hannah cares enough to come, to make the journey, that she feels sudden tears in her eyes. She stands up and goes around the table to Hannah, puts her cheek against hers. “Thank you,” she says.

“What for?”

“For coming here. You look gorgeous, Han.”

And Hannah laughs. “Thanks. You too.”

And as she circles back to her seat, she catches Nathan and Dea talking together now: “They’ve occupied the Senate building. Fifty of them in the War Room. Our VC signed a letter supporting the tuition hike.”

And Nathan is nodding. “It’s a shit show.”

Cate puts her hand on Dea’s shoulder. “I saw them,” she says, “this morning—they were handing out leaflets by the cathedral again. I was looking for that girl. The one with the pink hair, do you remember?”

Dea smiles. “I do. She’s inside. She’s in the Senate.”

Zoe leans forward. “It feels like the spirit of ’68 or something. Like these young people are being radicalized overnight.”

“I agree,” says Nathan. “But don’t people always say that? Wheel out the soixante-huitards?”

“Well,” says Zoe. “If my daughter was old enough, I’d want her to be in there.”

“Yeah,” says Nathan. “I guess I’d want that too.”

Cate looks around at her table, at her guests, and she feels happy—suddenly and completely happy. There is no future to fear, no past to regret, only this, only a series of moments, strung along, like lit globes on a string—there is warmth, there is food, there is comfort. Upstairs, Tom sleeps. She is grateful. And she sees that the bottles on the table are empty so she goes back into the kitchen and fetches another from the fridge—it is hard to open—and here is Sam, coming in behind her. “Here,” he says. “Let me do that.”

She turns around and there he is, her husband—and she leans in and kisses him—not a chaste kiss, and he laughs, pulls her closer, and she traces the rough line of his beard with her tongue.

“Wow,” he says. “You must be drunk.”

She laughs. She has forgotten this, the fizz of his proximity, this man, this bear of a man. Dea was right. This was what she needed to do.

She helps Sam carry the food and wine back in. They are configured slightly differently now—Dea and Tamsin are speaking together; Hannah, who is not talking to anyone, is looking over at Nathan and Zoe, whose heads are bent, looking at pictures on Zoe’s phone.

“She’s with a babysitter,” Zoe is saying. “I’m pretty nervous, but it seems to be going OK.”

“She’s gorgeous,” Cate hears Nathan say.