Presently she hears a shout and looks up to see Cate, dressed in a light summer dress, and a young girl of five or so coming towards her. Lissa sees Cate pause, bend to the girl and point, reminding her, no doubt, who this tall woman with the short fair hair is, because Lissa has never met Cate’s daughter, born the year after she left for good.

“This is Poppy,” says Cate, when they have hugged hello. “She’s been excited to meet you. I told her you used to be an actress. She loves to perform.”

“Ah,” says Lissa, “yes, a long time ago.” And she kneels beside Poppy, a round-faced, smiling child, and asks the right questions, listening as the girl chatters about her ballet classes, about the play she did last Christmas at school.

Another call, and they turn, and here is Hannah, coming from the pool, with her own daughter walking beside her—a tall six-year-old, another child that Lissa has never met, a girl with the look of her mother—the same sleekness, the same dark hair, the same graveness of expression. “Clara,” says Hannah, “this is Lissa.” Hannah and her daughter take their places on the blanket and the food is taken out and smiled over and dug into.

The talk, though, is only small talk, and Lissa, who has been imagining this moment for weeks, for years—feels a creeping sense of disappointment. Somehow she had hoped for more. But what, truly, can there be to say to each other, after all this time? Small talk is small, but the inroads to intimacy were savaged years ago. And who is to blame for that?

But then, as the afternoon deepens, as the wine is drunk and the light thickens, the women start to relax. They talk about the old days. They raise a toast to the old house. Hannah asks Lissa about her life in Mexico, and Lissa tells her about her job, teaching English in a language school, about the city she has grown to love, the mornings when she takes herself to a café with her laptop and sits and writes. Small moments, really, but they make her feel alive. And as Lissa talks, carving the air with her hands, Hannah feels a part of herself unfurl, just as she did that first time she met her—Lissa carries color in her, she always did, and Hannah feels herself drawn a little closer, warming herself at the small fire of her old friend.